


Agni's Chosen

by wormmunist



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: 41st division fanon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Ghost Zuko (Avatar), Hurt Zuko (Avatar), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Memory Loss, Minor Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, i promise. trust me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29147901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wormmunist/pseuds/wormmunist
Summary: The first overcast day of the year in the Fire Nation is the day that its prince is slaughtered by his father. Across rice paddies, farmers forget their veils inside, and sailors need not squint to read their maps. It is, by most accounts, a peaceful day across the country.However, the prince himself has not passed on to the spirit world. He is not ready to rest.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Hakoda & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Yue & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 70
Kudos: 332





	1. stumbling on the ghosts of children

The first overcast day of the year in the Fire Nation is the day that its prince is slaughtered by his father. Across rice paddies, farmers forget their veils inside, and sailors need not squint to read their maps. It is, by most accounts, a peaceful day across the country. The day is not documented with any special care - its records sit dusty in the royal scribe's office, regarded with little more than a passing glance. It is, however, remembered as the day that the Dragon of the West allegedly walked out of the palace, straight onto a ferry, never to be seen again.

That night, the crown prince stands in the courtyard, ankle deep in the small pool that lies under the cherry blossom tree. His legs cast no ripples across the surface, and the turtleducks paddle steadily through his form, tittering gleefully. He sinks to his knees and tries to pet the feathers of his favorite chick. Feeling a cold shadow on its back, the bird startles and paddles nervously after its mother.

He stands on the rooftop of the throne room and watches a huge pyre burn in the central stone courtyard, the same one used for coronations. Hundreds of people in white robes kneel before it. It looks like grandfather’s funeral, except he’s watching it from afar instead of at the front. The ashes spiral upwards and are lost in the cloudy sky. Uncle always said that a soul without Agni’s light would never find rest. Zuko wonders who the funeral is for.

It’s confusing at first. Azula always took every opportunity to tease him. He couldn’t figure out why she kept ignoring him, especially when he looked as stupid as he did in the silly white outfit the healers put him in. She would just walk right by him, eyes stony and glazed over, continuing with her lessons. He followed her around for days - from breakfast to tutors to her firebending lessons and etiquette classes. She used to have more time to play with Ty Lee and Mai before their mother left. Now whenever the girls visit, they ignore him, choosing instead to sit in silence with Azula.

He can’t really remember what happened. He just knows things are different.

He hasn’t seen Uncle in months, despite the fact that he roams the palace at all hours. The only place he refuses to go is father’s chambers and the ceremonial arena. He doesn’t know why, but the thought of it makes him drop to his knees and weep.

He remembers being afraid of the night. The night had taken too many things away from him - his father’s love, his mother’s presence. He used to huddle himself into his windowsill, wrap himself in the heavy velvet curtains, and sleep in the watchful gaze of the moon to protect from the shadows encroaching upon his life. It was not behavior fit for a prince, but sometimes, he could convince himself that he was lying curled into his mother’s skirts, and all thoughts of growing up would leave him. The gold embroidery felt so similar to the threads woven into her robes when he rubbed his cheek against it.

Now, the darkness of the night has become peaceful. He sits on the red tiled roofs of the palace and watches the moon’s face shine down on the Caldera, the winking flames of the capitol dancing through the wee hours of the morning. He’s learned the names of every servant and all of their schedules. He watches the cooks wake up at the crack of dawn to start making fresh rolls with red bean paste inside, the ones he used to enjoy so much before–

_Before what?_

Azula’s in a foul mood today, despite how well she’s been doing in her lessons. She can already create little streamers of crackling blue light that follow her fingers and fell birds from the sky. Zuko doesn’t try to talk to her. He hasn’t tried in a long time. The princess sits at the edge of his favorite pond and throws stale bread into the water, a scowl darkening her features. Mai and Ty Lee sit behind the barren cherry blossom tree, holding each other by the arm like sisters. Azula hurls the rest of the loaf at the trunk of the tree and watches the turtleducks scatter.

“It’s Zuko’s birthday.” Ty Lee whispers to Mai, while the boy in question sits in front of them. Is it really his birthday? It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long since–

_Since what?_

Zuko continues to stray further from the palace. It was inevitable, he assures himself, and a prince is supposed to know his people if he is to rule them. Still, he’s never been in a place this full, and it’s all so incredibly loud. He prefers to wander the market at night, when there are less people selling their wares.

“Are you lost?” The call barely startles him, but keeps coming, and nobody is answering, so he looks behind him. The voice belongs to a bedraggled old woman sitting in a stall adorned with colorful scarves and lanterns with a bowl of bones by her hands. Her expression rapidly turns to one of horror and fear. Zuko blinks. She points at him with a bony finger, jaw hanging open.

“Agni, what happened to your face?” He blinks again, unsure of why or how a stranger is speaking to him, after all these months of being invisible to the world.

“Can I take you to the healer’s?” She says. He tilts his head, confused. Healer’s? The woman reaches up to cover the side of her face with a trembling palm. He mimics her, a hand drifting up to his eye, the one he’s grown used to being unable to see out of. The skin feels slick and wrong, numb to the touch, but when he pulls his fingers away there’s a sheen of blood and clear fluid on his hands. How did I not notice this, he thinks, ears ringing. How did this get here?

Anything the fortune teller says is lost as the image of the young boy dissipates like smoke, too unstable to maintain a shape.

It hurts. Something about the mere knowledge of its presence on his face burns a hole through him. He doesn’t know how he ignored it for this long, with the sticky flesh crinkling when he turns his head, with the smell of burned meat hanging over him so heavily. It makes him sick to his stomach, and when he keels over in the palace to dry heave, the position burns into him like a strike of lightning. He sobs out. Why does it hurt so much, to kneel?

Months after the Fire Nation’s overcast and peaceful day, there comes a royal announcement; the crown prince has passed from a terrible unknown sickness. May Agni rest his flame eternal.

The crown prince himself watches the scribe penn this scroll, peering over her shoulder. He watches as it's sent to the royal press, copied, and strapped onto messenger hawks to be sent to towns and forts across the nation. I’m not dead, he thinks. I can’t be dead.

Zuko stays in the palace for a long time after that, almost exclusively following his little sister. She’s grown colder. He watches as the servants perfect her hair, copies her stances through her advanced katas, and sits next to her as she eats dinner alone at her desk. His sister is not a girl anymore. She’s changed with this year, slowly, like how a tree drops its leaves as winter approaches. There is altogether too much pressure for a twelve year old on her shoulders.

Azula is combing through her hair in her nightclothes when she looks into the mirror and sees her dead brother standing over her shoulder. She freezes, then narrows her eyes and turns around. Nothing there. Obviously.

His ruined face will haunt her dreams for weeks.

Azula is sitting in Zuko’s courtyard today. It’s not his, not really, but it’s the only place he felt safe when Mother was still with them. She has a break between classes when she’ll eat alone, and she’s taken her food outside today, perhaps to appreciate the little sprouts that are beginning to show their shy faces with spring’s arrival. She sits at the edge of the pond and eats slowly, as a princess is trained to do. None of the ducks come near her. They’ve learned who she is by now.

Azula almost doesn’t see him, perched in the tree as he is, watching the surface of the pond with a sort of wistful emptiness. She grits her teeth and wills him away.

It is incredibly lonely, to be trapped in a realm created purely for your own personal suffering.

The young prince sits on the vast steps of the palace and watches the moon rise over the sea. It reflects onto the wine-dark deep with a shimmering majesty, a glistening blue, with beams of silver shooting through the sparse clouds around it. It's almost like Agni. He remembers his mother telling him a legend about a giant who chased the sun across the sky in pursuit of its light. Maybe, he thinks, his eternal rest lies beyond the Caldera. How big is the world, exactly?

The prince lies down flat on his back and waits to be somewhere else.

He wakes up in a memory, half obscured by the tide and the sands, as it once was and will never be again. The stars above him twinkle coldly. Tilting his gaze, he can see the dark terraced shape of the beach house that he once called a home, before the end took him. Ember Island.

He watches the moon pull the tides and feels its cold light like the rays of the sun. He hasn’t seen Agni’s face in a long time. He remembers the sun was gone, hidden, on the day that he died. He still doesn’t know how it happened, exactly. Just a faint yet burning heat. It must have been some sickness that took his life.

If the sun has forsaken him, then so be it. He will find his own way to the spirit world without his ancestors’ blessing.

Walking through the house is a mistake. He can feel the dust like a second skin, smell his mother’s aroma of lilies and cedar, and he can feel the vice-like grip of his father’s fingers around his wrist. Too tight, too hot. He rubs the spot where the memory plays on his mind, behind his eyelids, trapped under too many layers of grief to unearth. By the time he leaves, he aches with unburied pain.

The full moon, eerie and resplendent, is still high in the sky when Zuko appears in a field of fire lilies. The scent nearly kills him a second time over. Instead, he sits and cradles the petals of hundreds of little flames, dew and tears sparkling in the moon’s rays. Ursa used to raise these in the courtyards. It brought her so much joy, to raise something fragile. He supposes she did a wonderful job of that with him as well.

“Hello there, young man.” This is the second time he has been addressed by an elderly woman in the dead of night, and he would be startled if he were not as overcome with longing as he was. He raises his head, but remembers last time, and does not turn. His hand ghosts over the wet skin of his marred face.

“You’re far from the village tonight.” Zuko does not know how to respond to this. Spirits do not have beds to sleep in. Her voice has a strange quality, like rough soapstone, like snapped bone. He thinks it might be what Azula would sound like if she ever grew old.

The lilies around him twist suddenly, shrivelling up into dark husks. He stands, surprised, as the water inside of them is ripped out. The woman snarls. He turns to see the moon shining on her like a sinister vision, with her veined hands drawn up around her like those of a puppeteer, fury and confusion etched into her wrinkled face.

“What on earth are you made of, boy?” She spits.

“I’m a spirit.” He whispers, before the smoke of his eye overtakes him and whisks him away from the bloodbender, the spring wind floating him over the ocean to another buried memory.

When he comes to, the prince stands before a pair of great lotus-patterned doors. He phases right through them; there is no need to knock on the door of an old master. He used to train here when he was young. When he was still warm, when his flesh still sung with praise for the sun and promises to make his father proud. He can’t think about his father right now. It would be too painful, here in the one place he was trained without burning hands to correct him. He hasn’t looked at his body since he died. He knows his skin looks like a map of burning rivers and handprints.

He wanders the grounds, dark and beautiful, where he learned the dual dao. Little has changed. The potted bonsai that Piandao loved to keep have moved outside to enjoy the spring warmth. Their branches rustle when he touches them, phasing between his fingers. He looks away, into his old master’s home.

Piandao’s desk is clean, organized, with scrolls sorted uniformly into drawers. There is still one letter lying out, however, and Zuko puzzles over it for a moment. It appears to be addressed to Piandao, in some of the most beautiful imperial penmanship the prince has ever seen.

_“The jasmine tile moves away from our home port and towards the east port. Though the east port bars its path, the jasmine has found a harmony with the rock tile, and it allows the flower’s entry to the city. I thank you for your help, dear friend._

_It is nearly the anniversary. My knotweed tile loved the spring.”_

Zuko stops reading halfway through. He never understood the purpose of Piandao’s long distance Pai Sho games. He looks behind him, where his master has mounted some of his favorite swords. Though proficient in the dual dao, he always preferred using a single weapon, as he believed it was the most ancient form of the art. Eventually, Zuko manages to find a pair of swords, hilts wrapped in navy silk cording. Hanging as they are, one reflects his golden eye, and the other shows an empty, twisted socket. It’s the first time he’s seen himself after death. He swallows and reaches a hand up to his face, a dull ache and searing heat still haunting him.

Zuko reaches for the dao and is surprised to feel their cool metal and rough handles on his skin. He lifts them off the wall, almost afraid of dropping them, and breathes in slowly for the first time in months. They feel like old friends, like holding hands with safety itself. The next morning, Master Piandao is surprised to find a pair of swords missing from his collection.

The prince has been hopping the Crescent Isles for weeks now, the wind carrying his jumbled spirit across the Mo Ce Sea. He walks crumbling streets and fields of grass, sits under trees and on rooftops of shanties, watches children beg for money and steal food. It’s bad. He didn’t know it was this bad. He dangles his legs over the poisoned water of a fishing village and thinks about his people; they _are_ still his. He is still responsible for their pain.

This town, perched on stilts in the middle of a lake, is the worst he’s seen so far. He’s only been travelling outside of the capitol for a few weeks now. The fact that there’s bound to be worse situations than this makes him sick. The miasma of sickness and hunger that hangs over this village is his nation’s fault. Something very close to his heart rejects this idea, tells him that it’s their fault, that if they’re suffering they should just move. If they were born better, they would be able to take control of their lives.

But he sees the people living here. Children with scuffed feet and dull eyes. Men who’ve never seen a day of education. Soldiers who couldn’t give a damn about any of them. Agni passes over them, apathetic and cold as she always is. There is no solid land here - the people are doomed, born into a cycle of poison.

The wind carries the prince to the mainland, farther north than he’s ever been. The trees are different here, the ground is rougher, the air is clearer. It’s the middle of spring. Flowers bloom early on the ridge separating red from green. The underbrush is vibrantly green, soft and full of life. He’s never seen a marsh before, and the reeds enchant him at first, the call of frogs echoing in the clear night air. There are soft lights at the top of a mountain that call to him, that promise company. He knows it’s futile to think there is any hope left for him, but he has nowhere else to go, so he climbs on bloody hands and knees.

When he arrives at the top, shaking off the damp cold of night, he is met with a dilapidated old building. The scent of eucalyptus and orange blossom lies on his tongue. In the windows, there are a few lanterns burning oil, close to extinguishing themselves. He moves to the door and is met with it opening before he can reach for the handle. Zuko is faced with the strange predicament of having yet another elderly woman talk to him, this one in green robes with a gray cat circling her feet.

“Oh, a spirit.” She laughs genially and opens the door further. Zuko blinks.

“Come on in. If you need to rest, there are bunks to your left.” The woman promptly turns and walks further into the house, which is more of a garden than anything else. Zuko enters, closes the door behind him, and follows the woman with an open jaw.

“How did you know that?” He asks indignantly as she begins to clip stalks off of a tree. She remains silent with her face screwed up in the details of her work. He waits impatiently as she wraps twine around the leaves, her hands working deftly with years of experience.

“Miyuki told me someone was coming, though I didn’t expect a spirit. I suppose that’s what I get for listening to her.” The woman chuckles and strokes her cat. It leans into her touch and regards Zuko with slitted green eyes.

“I mean, how can you tell I’m a spirit?” He demands. The herbalist cocks an eyebrow at him and sets her scissors down on the wooden table.

“I can tell you’re a spirit as easily as I can tell black from white. Not everyone has the gift, but it’s obvious once you use your brain.” She explains hotly.

“Now,” she punctuates this with a snap of her scissors, “go to bed. I’m busy.” Despite the fact that spirits do not need to, Zuko rests, melting into the smoke of his eye and hanging thickly over a bunk in the farthest corner of the room. Though the soldiers in the infirmary notice the smell in the morning, none of them question it.

Zuko lingers over the ancient institute at Taku for longer than he had over the Crescent Isles. He hovers over the herbalist’s shoulder as she crushes seeds against stones, forces tinctures down fussing throats, and nurtures her greenhouse as if it’s her own heart. Being a former Earth Kingdom city and harboring the Pohuai stronghold creates a certain demand for a healer in the area. There come many soldiers here, wearing both green and red. For the services offered, all arms are dropped. It is something Zuko has never even imagined; Earth Kingdom soldiers, tanned and built, sitting in cots next to men of fire with golden eyes. They are tired souls. Too young, more often than not, to serve in either military.

He sits outside and with some of the soldiers. It is overcast, as it always is when he wakes during the day. Some firebenders in later stages of healing are practicing their katas in the small stone yard set away from the porch of the greenhouse. He’s not sure why, but the sight of it makes him tremble, so he turns inside, seeking refuge in the overgrowth. One of the newer men sitting on his bunk lets out a small noise of surprise.

“Who are you, kid?” He calls out across the greenhouse. Zuko looks up, still unused to being addressed directly. The man tilts his head, a frown on his lips. He’s an Earth Kingdom soldier with a burn spread over his chest - Zuko watched his treatment last night. Today, clean white bandages cross his chest.

“I didn’t know they recruited kids in the Fire Nation.” He mutters darkly, sitting back in his cot. Zuko raises his chin at this.

“They don’t. I’m a spirit.” He snaps. The soldier looks as confused as expected.

“If you’re dead, then why are you all wrapped up?” It is Zuko’s turn to be confused. He lifts his hands to his eye, finding a layer of soft fabric instead of the wrecked socket that once went uncovered. Feeling around more, the bandages wind behind his head, but still let his hair fall in the phoenix tail. He doesn’t hear the soldier speak to him after that, too busy touching his face and running his fingers over the dry wraps.

Zuko asks the herbalist what else she knows of the spirit world.

“Not much. Just what my Miyuki tells me.” The cat in question licks its chest and looks at him like a piece of prey. Zuko squirms.

“Does Miyuki know how to get there?” He forces the question out as calmly as he can. The herbalist looks down at her cat, who looks up at her with the same expression of vague disgust that it looks at everything with. After a good long pause, the herbalist taps her chin and hums.

“Well?” Zuko clenches his jaw.

“She believes that travel is the best solution to your predicament. Perhaps you can find peace outside of your homeland.” She says softly, scratching behind Miyuki’s ears. Zuko bites the inside of his cheek and nods curtly, retreating to the greenhouse to think.

He supposes there is nothing truly binding him to the Fire Nation, dead as he is. He is no longer a prince - he has no claim to the dragon throne as a spirit. He has no family that desires him. He is free to travel without consequence.

The young prince lays in the flowerbeds and watches his red-tinged smoke lift up and through the glass panes and hanging pots, up to meet the heavy gray clouds that hide Agni’s sneer from his face. Every month he has spent living like this, with a foot in each world, has felt like the scrape of a knife against the skin of his soul. His chest feels hollow, empty, husked. This divine punishment drags him against burning coals.

He is sick of this. He is sick of being sick of this.

Zuko closes his eyes and decides to be somewhere else.


	2. nature and nurture in the pit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another year spent at the pyre.

Before he opens his eyes, humid air presses heavy on the young prince’s skin. He awakens in the cradle of knotted tree roots, the wood thick like giant worms beneath him, a healthy layer of dirt coating his palms as he stands. Dappled moonlight streaks through the canopy above him. The laced patterns fall on his face and make him squint joyfully. Night’s whisper, her blessings, have found him even away from home.

Zuko tries to find a path through the thick undergrowth. He is unsuccessful.

Thankfully, trekking through the damp is not as annoying and painful as it would be if he were still in the realm of the living. No thorns grab at his pants and spiderwebs trace right through him. He feels good about that - he wouldn’t want to destroy anyone’s home if he had the choice, even a spider’s. 

With that, he’s thinking about Uncle again, his strange proverbs. He remembers one in particular about a man trying to climb out of hell on a thread of spider silk, lowered by one of the Great Spirits himself. He doesn’t remember how it ends. Zuko hopes he’s not in hell.

It doesn’t feel like hell, not really. There’s no pools of blood and no hanging miasma of darkness. The moon is bright, the air is fresh, and he’s not  _ actually _ suffering. It’s not like how the Fire Sages described it, so it can’t be hell. It’s also not how they described paradise, either. He’s firmly stuck in the world he calls home. It should be more comforting than it is. 

Zuko tilts his head up to listen to the catowls hooting. It’s a sound he’s only read about, growing up in the palace. He thinks he likes this overgrowth, this absolute enormity of the world, the way that nature sprawls without limits. It’s foreign; it’s good. 

He’s never had that thought before.

Eventually, he does find a path of dirt tread flat over time, so he follows it to a small clearing. The ground is littered with tiny silver-white flowers, their trumpeting shapes glowing inside a circle of low stone statues. Each statue depicts a simple panda bear, in various poses. At the head of the circle, a stone bear towers, sitting back on its hind legs. He’s fairly certain this is a shrine of some sort, but for what spirit he does not know. He crouches down to the flowers and cups one in his hand. It almost feels alive.

When he turns back around, a panda bear stands before the head bear statue. It looks like how a memory feels - blurred and indistinct - or how he might remember the voice of his mother. He can’t exactly place it, but it’s not as it’s supposed to be. He jumps, but the bear doesn’t advance, instead tilting its head towards him in acknowledgment.

It gives off the same kind of subtle glow as the moon-flowers at his feet. He can see it clearly, with kind black eyes and fuzzy ears. It blinks patiently at him. After a moment, he reaches out a hand, palm up. It sniffs him, its great nose wet and cold, and he giggles before he remembers that princes aren’t supposed to giggle. 

“Are you a spirit, too?” He asks, quiet as not to disturb it. It simply snuffs in response. 

“Right. What should I have expected?” He mutters, turning back to the plants by his feet. The bear plods after him and sits, mouth grazing over the flowers, biting a few off at the stem and chewing slowly. Zuko watches with interest. The bear, with its strange pseudo-thumbs, wraps a paw around a vine and chews those as well. Zuko rolls his eyes and lays down. 

“You probably are a spirit. You just won’t talk to me,” he blows a petal away from his face, “for some reason. I think the spirit world hates me or something.” 

“I think Agni cursed me.” He says to nobody. It twists his gut to say out loud, but it rings true. The sun won't turn her gaze on him. He drips blood and smoke, wretched and cast aside by his own divine mother. Being lost would feel better if he knew what he did wrong. What did he do to deserve this?

Dishonor comes to mind, along with weakness, fragility, incompetence, and every other word he's heard come out of his tutors' mouths. He never was a good son. Always behind, always slow. He takes a deep breath and wills away the prick of tears in his eyes.

The panda bear makes a sound not unlike a sneeze, a waxy leaf stuck in its nose. Zuko covers his eyes back up and grits his teeth so hard that he turns into smoke and floats away. 

For whatever reason, he seems drawn to the wilderness again, and wakes up on the banks of a wide, slow-flowing river. It’s dusk, the sun having just set, and the lights of a village downstream make him dig his fingers into the sandy bank. It looks Earth Kingdom. From here, he can see specks of people walking between houses, holding lanterns, talking to each other. It feels strange to consider them more than just enemies, as people with jobs and families. Not just numbers on a map. 

A few voices, distant and childish, echo through the forest behind him. Zuko whirls around and sees the faint silhouettes of children outlined in the sun’s dying light, black against the purple sky. Stuttering laughter comes after a shout, a sound that’s been so scarce in the past year that it nearly makes him jump. The children keep moving, no doubt to soon be hidden from his sight. He looks behind him to the town below.

Zuko’s never been good with kids his age, but he’s also not good with adults. He chooses to follow the children. None of them will be able to see him anyway. 

Moving as a ghost is a bit more abstract than it is as a human. If Zuko wants to be somewhere, it’s less like a muscle and more like a will. Currently, he wants to catch up, so he does just that. His form whisps away at the edges when he flies forwards, darting around trees and jumping over roots, hopping from trunk to trunk like a grasshopper. The bite of wind graces his skin and tangles his hair. It’s the sweetest feeling, to trust his body so wholly.

The children gather themselves around a bonfire in a clearing newly swept flat by the tread of feet. The embers glow dimly, the yellow flames weak and soft. There are rickety tents set up around the trunks of ancient trees, constructed of spare or stolen clothing and dead branches jammed into the ground, boasting naught but bundled fabrics for bedding. It looks like how a remote settlement of children would. Zuko sits on the forest floor a short distance away from the rest of the kids; he doesn’t want to get close to the fire.

They are mostly quiet as they sit around the fire, spooning congee into their mouths from a pot that hangs over the smoldering pile. Zuko thinks most of them are younger than him. It draws him to question why they’re out here in the wilderness when there’s a perfectly good town just down the river.

One of the smallest kids, probably around seven, starts to cry. The group does not respond, other than the oldest boy wrapping an arm around him, but he just cries harder. Zuko expects him to be hit soon if he keeps that up - Father would  _ never _ tolerate that kind of display. Zuko learned the skill of crying silently very early in life. 

“I miss my mom. And my dad.” The crying child whines, almost too quiet for Zuko to hear it. That manages to twist his heart a bit, one part sympathy and one part envy. The boy holding him just smoothes a hand up and down his arm. He says something that Zuko can’t hear at this distance, but it seems to help, and the crying stops within a few minutes. It’s silent for long after that, until the rasp of a voice comes from a girl.

“What are we going to do?”

“We can’t go back. I’d rather die than live under Fire Nation rule.” The oldest boy spits, venom coating his tongue. Zuko feels an indignant stab of pride and disgust. If they ran from the Fire Nation and they’re living like this now, they have themselves to blame for their suffering. The people of the Earth Kingdom have always been stubborn and foolish for refusing to see the glory of fire.

“We’re going to starve, Jet.” Comes a voice of reason, the girl from before. 

“No we won’t. I’ll figure something out.” He says, confident, but Zuko has spent a lifetime lying to himself, and recognizes desperation when he hears it. 

“I promise. I’ve got under control. You should all go to bed. I’ll be here in the morning with breakfast, I promise.” He stands, shouldering the hooked blades on his back. The children look at him with big black eyes, too trusting, too young to know better. 

Zuko follows the rogue through the night, watches him stumble through fields and fail to find anything edible in empty mills and fields. He whacks through a head of wheat in anger, then kicks it into shreds, cursing all the while. The boy sits down against a rotting fence and holds his head in his hands. Zuko sighs, waiting for another fit of rage.

“They’re going to die. And it’s my fault.” His ragged voice, barely spoken, reaches Zuko’s ears. He bites the inside of his cheek. The rogue is right. Those kids probably will die, with nobody to feed them, too proud for their own good. He takes a deep breath, has a moment of his own anger, then spirits himself away with purpose.

He justifies his actions with three arrows of logic: they are children, they are non-combatants, and it is the only honorable choice left.

Jet comes back to camp in the morning, tired and empty-handed, to see his group eating rice without him. 

“Oh, hey Jet!” Smellerbee calls, waving him over with the first smile he’s seen in days. He ambles over, dumbstruck, as she hands him a bowl. 

“Where the hell did you get this?” He grumbles, squinting at the food. She blinks at him and narrows her eyes. 

“I thought  _ you _ dropped this off. I woke up and found it next to the fire pit, and I assumed you went out again to look for more. You’re telling me this isn’t from you?” She questions, poking his chest with a rice-covered finger. He shakes his head vehemently.

“It’s not poisoned or anything, is it?” He hisses, gripping the bowl tighter. She shakes her head, gesturing behind her to the rest of the group, all eating peacefully. 

“Well, who brought it then?” Smellerbee shrugs, scooping more rice into her mouth. Jet scrutinizes this mysterious gift before doing the same. And far away, Zuko shakes a few stray grains of rice out of his shoe. He doesn’t regret it, but a black shame pools in his stomach like spoiled milk.

He’s had something on his mind ever since he left the herbalist institute of Taku. It’s crept up on him like a predator, looming over his back, shadowing his movements over months through the small towns and forests of the Earth Kingdom. Each town is more barren than the last, each forest more empty and desolate. 

He wants to see Lu Ten. 

When news came of his death, Zuko cried for days, all under the cover of night to avoid his father’s wrathful hands. It hurt like nothing in the world. It wasn’t supposed to happen to him, not his own cousin. It was a tragedy for others to die in war, yes, but Zuko never thought it would happen to him. The war wasn’t supposed to hurt like this. It was supposed to be glorious. Why wasn’t it glorious?

Lu Ten died during the failed siege of Ba Sing Se, the Earth Kingdom’s biggest stronghold on the very east of the continent. Zuko remembers this easily, like slipping into warm water. Lu Ten himself is probably in the spirit world. The water is too hot, now. Lu Ten could be trapped between realms like him. The water has frozen around his ankles. 

Zuko settles his path upon Ba Sing Se, not out of curiosity, but out of love - the most agonizing kind of it. Love as pain. Love as blood, torn from an open wound. 

So he moves east, ghosting over dozens of ruined towns, burned farmland, choked rivers. He rests in haystacks and in barns. He becomes one with the smoke drifting up from burnt buildings and scorched scrubland. Sometimes people see him, offer him what little they have to spare or a place to stay. Most of the time, he is quiet, and occasionally, people can tell what he truly is. Some try to ease his spirit with offerings of incense and flowers. Children stay away from him, scared of the silent stranger with one gold eye and a face full of bandages. 

The crown prince huddles himself onto a ferry full of the sick and wounded. They are all dressed in green and brown rags, many of them coughing and crying, and he finds himself feeling a prick of sympathy despite his disgust. These are foolish people. But they are still people. 

When they arrive at Ba Sing Se in late autumn, Zuko spends countless heartbeats staring up at the huge earthen wall that spreads out on both sides farther than the eye can see. It’s enormous, larger than anything he’s ever seen, hard for him to even comprehend. Through his travels so far, he has only seen broken stone and rubble. This is the largest, most powerful stronghold of the Earth Kingdom, and he now understands why Uncle gave up. Zuko’s lucky to be here as a spirit instead of a soldier. 

He supposes Lu Ten had both of those honors. 

He spends weeks wandering the outer wall. It is truly massive, but Lu Ten died out here, and he has to find him. There’s no evidence of the siege on any sides of the wall. Smooth sandstone stretches out endlessly, spotless. After a long time, Zuko decides to move past the first wall. Passing through that thick barrier feels like missing a step on the stairs, like fumbling in front of his father. A yawning pit remains in his stomach for days afterwards.

All that’s inside this wall, for a long time, is fields of rice and wheat. Farmers wave to him with their veiled hats obscuring their faces. He waves back. It makes sense to protect crops, he supposes. This city is enormous, and if their farmers were without work, the whole place would starve. It does give him a long pause though, at the implication that soldiers of his nation would burn crops.

Eventually, the crops turn to shanties, towns constructed poorly out of spare wood and metal hammered together with stakes. Despite the conditions, they’re densely inhabited, full of mothers and fathers and people all bustling through the night streets. Shops and stalls are still open, as they were in the Caldera, and Zuko feels the ache of homesickness deep in his throat. But he has a job to do, a cousin to find. He can’t go home.

He spends three months making his way across the lower ring. It is long, lonely work. People are less generous here than they were out in the wide expanse of the Earth Kingdom’s countryside. He sleeps in rotting crates and gutters, still finding himself unable to awaken during the hours of day. When the first rays of sunlight peak over the eastern side of the wall, he will dissolve, anger burning deep and raw in his veins. The more ground he covers, the more he has to rest; the desperation has a physical effect on him. Agni has abandoned him, wholly and truly. 

Zuko passes through an alleyway. Rainwater drips off the roofs, repetitive and dull, forming a pond in the mud by the entrance to the street. The moon ripples through it as a dog laps at the puddle, sniffing at his ankle and looking up at him quizzically. The prince reaches down, but the dog backs up, whimpering, and runs away. Typical.

Chatter from a nearby storefront floats over to him, and he turns his good ear towards it.

“There’s a new tea shop on the north side of the ring. Run by this old guy, the place looks beat to hell, but it’s godly. I would give my week’s pay for a cup.” Someone says, sweeping away a day’s worth of dirt and trash gathered outside of a tailor’s store. His coworker hums disinterestedly, hammering a line of nails into a floorboard. 

“Yeah? What’s it called?” 

“Uh, The Jasmine Dragon, I think.”

Zuko wrinkles his nose. Jasmine is the worst. Lu Ten only liked it because Uncle did.

When Zuko gives up, he is huddled outside a ramshackle building overlooking a hill, leaning on the wall next to him and curling into himself like a dying spider. The air is scented with tea, and it makes the pain ten times worse. Lu Ten is not here. Lu Ten was good enough to pass on. Lu Ten was a radiant heir to the dragon throne with Agni’s blessing. He cannot find Lu Ten because he is in the spirit world. He was never here in the first place.

A warm and familiar voice from inside the building reaches him.

“I am taking the day off tomorrow. I hope it is not too much trouble for you.” This voice reminds him of something, though he’s not sure what. It sounds like a low, steady flame; like the velvet petals of the orange blossom.

“Of course not, Mushi. I can run the shop while you’re gone.”

“Thank you.” There is a long, heavy pause. “Tomorrow is the anniversary of my first son’s passing.”

Zuko sucks in a breath of air so sharp that it nearly pierces through his lungs and shatters his ribs entirely.

“I need to pay my respects. You understand.” Zuko understands too much. He is covering his mouth with his hands and trying not to scream. Of all the people to be in Ba Sing Se, of all his family to see right through him, or even worse,  _ see him like this _ , it had to be Uncle. The one man who’s ever shown an ounce of care for him. The bell on the door to the shop jingles, opening into the street. Zuko digs his nails into the wood of the storefront, choking.

The teamaker turns, surprised, but only sees a thick cloud of smoke streaking its way through the night air. 

It takes Zuko a long, long time to come to after that. He sleeps for as long as he needs. He sleeps until it no longer feels like the jagged edges of a shattered porcelain bowl. He sleeps until the wind carries him further east than he’d intended, all the way to the ocean. Waking up on soft sand, sky lit purple and ash, sea all red with hunger, is maybe his favorite resurrection so far.

He still feels raw inside, all broken with loss. 

Zuko thinks about tossing himself into the sea. He remembers beachcombing at Ember Island with his mother, who would always find the most beautiful pieces of soft matte rock, emerald green and rosy pink. She would press them into his small hands like they were the stars themselves. He doesn’t want to feel this way anymore, like he’s holding a sword inside of his body. He wants the ocean to see him as he is and smooth him down like a piece of sea-glass and hold him for as long as it takes before this pain becomes soft and pale.

When Zuko feels lost, he does what he knows best: he tries again. He picks himself up off the beach and dusts the sand off his worn white linens, dirty from two years of hungry searching, and looks around him. He’s landed in the middle of bay inlet, thick pine forests lining the entire perimeter. At the edge of the bay, hanging off the peninsula itself, he sees a large wooden boat almost entirely hidden by the trees. Its sails are drawn, leaving the bare bones of its masts to stand out black against the purple sky.

That’s as much of an answered prayer that he’s ever going to see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am not going to be tagging every minor character included because the tag list would be simply monstrous


	3. like the hummocks of snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko continues to haunt his way around the globe and accidentally bothers some very important children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stole the Akhlut from the Muffinlance cinematic universe. Go read her fics, Salvage destroys me <3

_ Chief Hakoda, _

_ You and your men are to head west out of Chameleon Bay to the neutral port of Kyoshi Island. You will deliver the call to arms there and trade as you see fit. From there, wait for my orders.  _

_ General Fong _

-

Kanaaq is organizing the food stores in the cargo hold when he smells it. Cooked meat - a scent that definitely should not be down here, despite how it makes his stomach rumble. He calls out to the dark corners of the ship’s belly, holding his lantern in front of him. 

"Anyone down here?" 

There's no noise in response. He furrows his brow and goes back to checking the dates on wooden boxes and pulling the oldest ones to the front. It's not easy work, with heavy dried meats and dense breads making up a large majority of their stock. He takes a break, leaning against the doorframe, watching the lantern's light sway against the floor. It barely casts enough light for him to be sure, but there's no mistake. 

It's the image of a boy, translucent and reddish in color, bandages covering the left side of his face. Smoke lifts lazily from the side of his head that’s wrapped in gauze. His skin glows faintly in the dark of the hold. He's sitting on the crate opposite of Kanaaq, hands tucked politely under his thighs, blinking his one eye slowly. 

"Oh, Spirits."

Upon Kanaaq's vocalization, the boy rears his head back, seemingly surprised. The sailor scrambles backwards and out of the hold, slamming the door behind him. 

Word spreads very quickly on a ship with a crew of nine. Lately, rumor is that there’s a stowaway on the Akhlut. Its cutter sails billow in the wind, and if you look hard enough, you can see a boy sitting near the rigging on the yard. At night, if you’re quiet enough, you’ll see him looking out over the railing at the moon. When the cook prepares dinner, he swears he can feel eyes looking over his shoulder while he’s chopping meat.

Someone is haunting the Akhlut; this is strange, because it is not a haunted ship. It is a fishing boat gutted and repurposed for war - the only thing that could haunt it is fish. Stranger still is the ghost itself. A young boy, no more than fifteen, with a swath of bandages covering his face. Pale skin and long black hair gives anyone blighted by Fire Nation raids a long, dreadful pause. But he is just a boy, and a dead boy at that. 

The captain of the ship does not necessarily believe in hungry ghosts. Spirits, yes, because he was raised to respect them. However, people do not remain in this realm. They pass into the spirit world, where they roam until they are reincarnated (or, according to some, die a second and final time). His crew all claim to have seen the apparition and warn him accordingly. He is not amused.

“If you really think there’s a ghost on the ship,” Hakoda sighs, rubbing his forehead, “you should at least figure out why he’s here. What he wants, so we can ease his spirit.” He is the chief of his tribe - he has a long history with communication and compromise. 

“Why don’t you do it, Hakoda? You’ve always had a soft spot for kids.” Ribs Bato, nudging him in the arm with his bony elbows. Hakoda shoulders him back, and his Second just grins. He  _ does _ have a soft spot for kids, but not dead ones from the enemy nation. Not ones that were, for some reason or another, kicked out of the spirit world.

“Fine. Only because you’re all too scared to talk to a little boy.”

Hakoda rolls up the star charts after he dismisses their navigator. It’s going to be at least a month until they make it to Kyoshi Island, more if they run into trouble, which he knows they will. It’s foolish to hope for the best in times of war. The chief heaves a long, heavy sigh, and steps out of his cabin for a breath of air. The ocean’s air is crisp at night, but it’s nearly summer. The stars shine coldly above him.

He should’ve been expecting it, but he still freezes when he sees the ghost leaning on the railing of the bow. Kanaaq wasn’t lying - he  _ does _ glow a bit, in an ethereal, wispy way. It almost looks like smoke lines his clothes. Hakoda remembers Bato’s advice and heaves another, darker sigh, running a hand through his hair. The beads on his braids clack together. 

The spirit turns his head at the noise and glares at him with a narrow yellow eye. It’s unnerving, how many times the chief has stared at eyes like that, watched life bleed out of them. There’s no life left to bleed out of this boy’s eyes. They’re dull, like tumbled glass. Hakoda takes a few slow steps forward to stand next to the apparition, takes a quiet breath, and speaks.

“Are you a spirit?”

The boy huffs through his nose, a bitter attempt at laughter.

“Why are you here?” 

The boy shrugs.

“Did we hurt you?” He asks. The ghost shakes his head no. 

“Are you… looking for help?” He narrows his eyes down at the roiling waves and bites the inside of his cheek. The chief tilts his head to the side, trying to get a better look at him, before the boy glares at him and backs away with his hands clenched into fists. Hakoda puts his hands up.

“Leave me alone.” The ghost says with his sandpaper voice, and melts into a thick grey smog that wreathes around the crow’s nest. 

It’s a few days after that incident that Hakoda sees the ghost again, this time sitting down with his legs through the railing, hands folded neatly in his lap. The man takes his time, earning a few pointed looks from his crewmates, before attempting another conversation. 

“What’s your name, kid?” Hakoda asks, hands braced on the railing, looking at the moon. There’s a long silence. 

“If you’re going to stay, we need something to call you.” He says. In a small voice, almost nostalgic, the ghost answers. Hakoda hums, nodding. 

“Why are you here, Zuko?” The name feels odd and foreign on his tongue. Zuko rests his forehead against the railing and peers into the dark water. He wants to be swept up in it.

“I don’t know.” It’s not vague, the way he says it. It’s raw and desolate. He’s lost. 

It’s a delicate push and pull. A knot made of a thousand of the finest silk threads. Ease the knot one way and a dozen threads become tighter, nudge it the other way and the knot clamps up completely. Follow one thread only to tangle a hundred more. Asking the boy any question about himself is like trying to coax a fish into walking on land. Hakoda quickly learns to avoid these lines of conversation, having seen how tightly the boy draws himself in, bitter and unshakable. 

For a while, he tries casual conversation. The boy sees through this and snarls at him to stop. He tries silence, but quickly realizes that nothing is gained for either party. Eventually, he settles on stories of his home and his children. They work much better than he’d anticipated.

“Where I come from, there’s no sun in the winter.” Hakoda says, making Zuko look up in surprise. He’s sitting on a crate a few paces away from the chief, who’s holding a tool up to the stars and measuring with his palm in the way sailors do. 

“What do you mean?” The boy asks, a confused bit of venom on his tongue, not exactly sure of the man’s intentions. Hakoda hums and adjusts his tool.

“In the south, the sun is always below the horizon for the winter months, no matter what the time of day is. There’s a kind of soft dim light that washes everything in blue.” Hakoda explains, taking the sextant away from his face to look back over his shoulder at Zuko. The boy’s face is set in a hard line. The chief turns back to the sky.

“I think you’d like it, where there’s no sun.” Hakoda says. Zuko digs tiny crescent moons into his palms.

“Yeah. I would.”

Hakoda remembers the story of his father’s polar bear-dog, a beast wounded and left behind by his pack. The animal was so afraid of men that it would snap at the healers trying to clean its wounds. It took months of trust earned in careful deliberation, bit by bit, to convince the dog that it was safe. 

Weeks later, Hakoda sits next to Zuko, legs dangling through the railing, and takes out a pocket knife to whittle a tiny flat bone with. Zuko stares across the ocean and sends fleeting glances down to Hakoda's hands. 

"Tui and La are the great spirits of our tribe. The moon and the ocean. She was the first waterbender, the moon. Taught our ancestors how to bend and how to sail." He explains, taking pauses to blow dust off his hands. Zuko waits. 

"La is the more volatile of the two. Unpredictable. But we could never survive without the ocean." He says. Zuko considers this with a hand in his own heart; it's true to his homeland as well as the sailor's people. His nation is an island chain, dependent upon the ocean to trade, trusting the tides to protect their coastal cities. 

"You spend a lot of time looking at the moon. Does Tui speak to you?" He asks hesitantly. Zuko shakes his head, face set in a frown. 

"No spirits speak to me." He whispers, picking at the wooden railing. Hakoda hums cautiously, whittling away at the bone, carefully guiding its shape.

"I'm sure they will eventually. They do things for a reason." He assures the boy, who scowls harder in response. Zuko knows the reason; he’s known it ever since he was born, every time his father left scorches on his shoulders and handprints on his arms. 

Inadequacy. Weakness. Failure.

"Is Tui a kind spirit?" He finds himself asking, in a voice far too shaky for a prince. Hakoda nods. The sailor has a way of speaking, far apart and punctuated with long silences, that reminds him of Uncle. His heart still pangs when he thinks of that rickety little shop in the heart of the Earth Kingdom.

"Tui is benevolent. She protects and teaches." Hakoda says. Zuko looks up at the big wide moon and wants to talk to her, wants to understand what he did wrong, if he can fix it. Tui stares back, unseeing.

Another time, Zuko looks over the chief’s shoulder at the letters he’s drafting. He startles when he realizes he has a guest, but recovers smoothly and continues writing, characters free and casual. Zuko frowns down at the calligraphy.

“You have children?” He asks, stunned. Hakoda smiles sadly.

“Two, a son about your age, and a daughter a few years younger.” His voice beams with pride, and Zuko’s stomach roils like an angry sea. 

“She’s a waterbender, like my mother’s mother. I was looking for a master for her before I left.” He says, not without a tinge of regret. Zuko clutches his arm uncomfortably, digging into his flesh. He doesn’t know how to respond to this warmth. Fathers aren’t supposed to be like this. The text of the letter is loose, affectionate, swirling. A dense feeling writhes in his chest.

“My son, he’s going to be a good man. He’s strong, wants to fight. I know he’ll look after her.” And the feeling just gets tighter and heavier, a molten mass of buried pain. He feels sick. Fathers aren’t like this. Hakoda continues to write to his children, and Zuko dissolves when he thinks about his hands and the things that fathers do with them.

Their final talk is just before sunrise. There’s a purple haze that rises over the world just before Agni rears her golden hair and forces Zuko into sleep. It washes the Akhlut out, drawing the color in its sails to grey. Hakoda leans over the bow to look out at the approaching shore of Kyoshi Island.

“Where will you go now?” He asks. The prince looks at the horizon over the sea, at the distant line of ice and snow.

“South. Where the sun  _ isn’t. _ ” He spits the last word, bitterness coating his tongue, and Hakoda thinks about his children with the same sadness he’s always loved them with. Hakoda thinks about Sokka, if he had been killed before his time. If he had a bleeding heart of fire and a hazy form of smoke. 

“How did you die, Zuko?” All but whispered. The boy hesitates, lifting a hand to his eye. 

“Sickness,” he says, “sickness.” Again, as if to reassure himself. And he’s sure of it, as sure as the sun rises and kills him again. He remembers the smell of herbs and oil and burnt flesh. He remembers the infection burning through him like Agni’s blood. He remembers Uncle holding his hand and praying. The fever took his eye. Sickness killed him. 

Hakoda doesn’t respond to that. Just looks at him with heavy blue eyes.

“My tribe is to the west of the tundra. You’ll find a place to stay on the shore, if Sokka isn’t fishing.” He offers. Zuko blinks, then slowly, timidly bows with his hands in the shape of a flame. Princes aren’t supposed to bow to commoners, and certainly not to the enemy. But he’s not a prince anymore, is he?

Hakoda watches veins of grey smoke drift over the ocean towards his homeland and hopes he did the right thing. 

-

Sokka is fishing. The summer months have passed, giving him a relatively normal amount of daylight, and he’s decided to take a trip and hopefully catch a haul before winter comes. Being the only man in the tribe is hard, hard work. He hasn’t managed to catch any big game without anyone to help him hunt, and dried meat from two years ago only lasts so long in a village full of children. He’s fishing because it’s the only feasible option he has left. 

He turns the hook in his fingers and jabs another grub onto it, watches it squirm, and casts the line out far into the water, barely rocking his boat at all. With nobody to talk to and nobody to hear him, these trips offer him somewhat of a break from the rest of the tribe. He’s not sure if he likes it or not. He misses the rest of the men. He wishes he had their guidance, their experience, their help in making sure they’ll survive the winter. Last winter they had to rely on the extra meats the men had stockpiled before leaving - Sokka doesn’t want to know what would’ve happened without it. 

There are days he resents his father for leaving. Those are bad days. He thinks Katara has more than he does. Mostly, he resents the Fire Nation for making his dad leave in the first place. 

Despite the strangeness of sleeping in a hut made of wood, he eventually convinces himself into rest, bundled in a few pelts and curled up in his bedroll. In the darkness, he does not see a boy crouched over the still-warm coals of his dinner, hands out to embrace the heat. 

Sokka is welcomed back to the village with the smiling faces of his elders and children crowding at his knees, jumping up on his parka and shouting gleefully. He pats their heads and nods to his grandmother, heading to the meeting hall to put his cache of dried fish away. Dad used to have discussions with the elders and the men here when the tribe was still full of people. Lately, it hasn’t seen much use outside of food storage. 

The young man collapses in his bedroll at the end of the day and buries himself in furs. He’s nearly asleep when he hears a hushed call of his name. He opens his eyes to see his grandmother kneeling next to him, a finger to her lips. Sokka bolts upright, thinking of smoke and sleet falling from the sky.

“What’s going on?” He whispers frantically. She placates him, shaking her head and hands, patting his arm. 

“Nothing, Sokka. I need to ask you some things.” Kanna says quietly, a look in her eyes that makes his stomach open up like a pit, and Sokka bites his tongue and waits.

“You brought something back with you.” She states, and Sokka finally sits up with crossed legs, shaking off sleep and staring, bewildered, at his grandmother. She wets her lips before speaking. 

“Did you invite someone into our home?” She asks.

“Gran-gran, what are you talking about?” He whispers, absolutely lost. She sighs heavily. Almost nothing is visible in the low light coming into the igloo from the moon, but Sokka can see her hands clenching and unclenching nervously. 

“There is a spirit here, Sokka. It came back with you from your trip. Did you invite anything into the hut while you were there?” Kanna asks again, hushed and quick, almost urgent. He shakes his head vehemently, whole body shaking with the movement. 

“I didn’t see or talk to anyone, Gran-gran.” He stutters, made truly tense by the intensity of her tone. She purses her lips and looks to the edge of the igloo. Moonlight filters faintly through the pelts hung over the entrance.

“Are we in any danger?” He asks. Despite not knowing the science behind it, Sokka knows the spirit world to be real, as confusing and vague as it is. Gran-gran looks back to him.

“I can’t tell what this one wants yet. We’ll have to wait and see.” Kanna says, patting his arm again and standing to leave. He watches her leave, heading back to her own igloo, and eventually Sokka falls into a fitful sleep. He dreams of red smoke and grief.

Sokka does run into the spirit, after days of worry between him and his grandmother. He’s up late walking around the village’s perimeter to calm his nerves when the crunch of snow under his boots doesn’t line up with his own feet. He stops dead in his tracks, puffs of vapor rising from his mouth, and turns slowly. 

It’s just a boy. Pale, translucent, wrapped up like a mummy and wearing nothing but a sleeveless shirt and wide legged pants a size too big for him. He doesn’t even have shoes on. Smoke lifts from his face easily, carried up into the crisp night air. Sokka stares at him. He stares back, narrowing his yellow eye and stepping back.

“You can see me.” The spirit notes, not all too happily.

“Are you an evil spirit?” Sokka asks with his mittens curled into fists. The boy scowls. 

“What is  _ that _ supposed to mean?” The ghost grumbles.

“What are you here for? What do you want?” He pushes, attempting to draw some amount of information out of the specter. He glowers at Sokka, shoulders squared, and sets his jaw.

“I’m not leaving. Get used to it.” He snarls. Sokka crosses his arms and sends him the same glare, silence stretching out like a bowstring about to snap.

“Stay away from my tribe.” He finally says, and stomps back into his and his sister’s igloo. He decidedly does not spend the rest of the night sharpening his boomerang, but if you asked Katara about it, she would say he did. 

Katara herself has some different opinions on the spirit, who Gran-gran has deemed safe, though he is nowhere close to benevolent. He only looks to be a bit older than her. He feels like a memory - not one of her memories, but when she looks at him from afar, the same feeling arises when she remembers her mother, her father. It’s grief; grief given a form, a wound, and no purpose. 

He watches her waterbend clumsily with a wide eye and confusion evident on his face. She chases him off with a flustered wave of her arms. Startled, he dissolves into smoke and floats away.

Sokka believes in spirits, but he almost wishes they did not exist. This one is very annoying. He shoves his smoking face where he is not needed and has made Sokka jump out of his boots on multiple occasions. Gran-gran says the boy is probably just a wandering ghost that will leave in a few months when he’s bored and instructs her grandchildren to be polite to him, lest he curse them and they wake up as a bubble trapped under the ice. Sokka does not believe in spirit magic, but he does follow her advice, just as a precaution. 

Zuko likes it here. Agni hasn’t shown her face in weeks, and he hasn’t slept a single time since the polar night began. It almost makes him feel real again, almost like he’s not living through one long, horrible dream. He enjoys scaring Hakoda’s son. The waterbender intimidates him, but she avoids him, so it’s okay. 

He hangs over the firepit in their igloo, watching his reflection, still not able to fathom how they can have a fire in a house made of ice. Katara stirs the soup with her waterbending, moving her whole upper body in the little motion. She’s been nice to him - looked at him a few times, even nodded at him once or twice. He’s trying not to test that.

“Do you have a name?” Katara asks him. Zuko stills in stunned silence. Nobody has spoken to him in months. In the soup, his reflection stares back at him, a few years older, but no more healed than he was on the day he woke up with the ugly red mark on his face. Smoke drifts up from underneath the wrappings. 

“Zuko,” he mutters after a long pause, “it’s Zuko.” He looks up to see her barely biting her tongue in her mouth. The ghost narrows his eyes.

“Sorry, is that name too Fire Nation for you?” He drawls, toxic oozing from his words. He crosses his arms and folds in on himself. Katara purses her lips into a straight line, eyes like shards of ice. Zuko remembers his tutors teaching him about waterbenders freezing the water in soldiers’ blood. He can’t be hurt, he reminds himself, but his skin still prickles. 

“No, it’s okay.” She forces out a smile that’s all teeth. Zuko snorts. She looks nothing short of murderously sick. Eventually she goes back to cooking. The silence is long and charged like a lightning storm. Zuko is not a fan of it, but sticks around out of spite. 

Sokka and Katara are going fishing out on the melted and open ocean. Zuko sits on the bow of their boat and dangles his feet in the water. Since he told Katara his name, she’s ignored him - so much for testing that kindness. The boy ignores him too, choosing to hunch over the side of the water with a spear. The sun hasn’t yet peeked over the horizon, but he can tell it’s getting closer by how faint he feels. Winter is ending.

The next few minutes pass in a jumbled, confused shriek of noise and color and arguments. The boat is broken. Katara is shouting at her brother, the ocean around them frothing and angry with her movements. Zuko skitters away from her on the ice. Sokka makes feeble attempts to calm her, but she screams at him and the water under her control shoots backwards and into an iceberg, cracking it open like a raw wound. Blue light shoots upwards from it in a pillar of swirling energy.

Zuko hides his face with his arms, the strange force inside the iceberg pulling at his form, smoke pouring out of his eye with a burning intensity. He cries out in pain. Disoriented, he hunches over on his hands and knees. He feels a great creaking, shuddering thing in his chest, rattling against his ribs like a caged bird, and he digs his nails into the ice, aching from the inside and out. 

Something is  _ wrong _ . Whatever is inside that iceberg is  _ wrong _ . When his vision clears, the smoke suddenly whisked away from him, the concerned grey gaze of a little boy with blue tattoos looks down on him.

Zuko recognizes the significance of these adornments and promptly, violently bursts into smoke. 


	4. running

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With some help, Zuko convinces himself to wake up. He regrets it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize if this chapter’s beginning is hard to follow, but that is the intention. All things I do have purpose. CW for a mentioned eating disorder, violence against children, vomiting, and some slightly graphic depictions of gore.

“Hush, Zuko. The play is starting.” The voice of his mother chides him from above, and he feels a soft hand tuck a strand of hair behind his ear and settle on his shoulder. He’s reeling, stomach turning over and in on itself, and he has no idea what is going on. The theatre is dim, lit only by scones in the wall. He knows where he is - he knows where he was. This entire place feels like a headache. Mother’s hand rests next to his neck and he wants to wail. But he’s her favorite child, her baby boy, so he quiets himself for her. She loves the theatre. 

The curtain lifts. On stage are foreign warriors, dressed in blues, sitting around a low table. Zuko thinks it’s odd how the scene is set - usually, the set is oriented so the audience has the best view of all characters. But there are actors facing away from the crowd, talking into the stage instead of out from it, faces hidden. The only one facing the audience is a man sitting higher than the others at the head of the table. Zuko thinks he looks familiar, somehow, despite the sharp cheekbones, dark skin, and porcelain beads in his hair. He looks like a father, for some reason. He projects his strong voice and silences all the men on his council.

“General, I’ll hear your plan now.” He announces, and a man near the head nods.

“Chief Hakoda, I propose a bold plan. We send a new platoon into the strait and let them be taken by the Fire Nation’s metal cruisers. Then, the waterbenders will come up from below the ocean and completely destroy their cruisers.” 

Zuko listens with interest. A character with a white furred collar jumps to his feet from his spot on the council floor, hands in fists.

“You’re proposing we sacrifice a whole platoon of new soldiers for a tactical advantage?” The boy shouts, his young voice echoing around the theatre’s walls.

“We’ll win the battle in a landslide victory. It’s foolproof.” The general nods.

“How could you say something like that? Those are your people! Those are loyal warriors! And you would just send them to their deaths?” He rages. At the head of the table, Chief Hakoda rises slowly to his feet, and Zuko can practically feel the room drop ten degrees.

“Sokka, my son. That is enough.” The words are practically spat, ice forming on the edges of the room. The curtain falls. Zuko can’t hear the stage crew in the heavy darkness. His mother’s hand on his shoulder tightens the slightest bit, and she leans down to whisper in his ear.

“Pay attention to this, Zuko.” She breathes. He nods, palms clammy and shaking, throat tight. The curtain lifts, showing some sort of pavilion, pillars of carved ice and a packed snow floor gleaming in the light of icy white fires. The boy from earlier crouches on one end of the floor, a strange curved weapon clutched in his hand. He’s changed drastically, wearing a thin blue shirt and wraps around his arms, white and grey paint decorating his face. On the other end of the pavilion is a similar crouched figure, an animal’s pelt draped over them. 

A gong sounds. The boy springs to his feet like a wildcat, whirling around with a look of brave resolve on his painted face. At the other end, the figure rises slowly with their club, turning and letting the fur drop from them onto the white floor. Sokka, the young warrior, draws his face in horror, whole body going slack. Zuko’s breath catches in a strangled sound. His opponent is his own father. 

Chief Hakoda stalks towards his son. Sokka drops his weapon, stumbling backwards, and falls to his knees. Zuko thinks he is going to vomit.

“Rise and fight for your honor, my son.” His voice is laced with contempt.

“Please, father, I meant no disrespect.” Sokka stammers, head bowed to the floor, hands out before his father’s feet.

“You insulted me in my own war room. You will rise and  _ fight _ .” He spits this last word, and Zuko flinches instinctively. It is achingly familiar, but for what he does not remember.

“I will not fight you. I am your loyal son.” Sokka looks up at his father, and even from a distance Zuko can see the tears in his eyes.

“You will learn respect,” he utters, “and suffering shall be your teacher.” 

With both hands, Chief Hakoda brings his club down on his son’s head. There is a sickening crunch. Blood spatters on the sparkling white floor. Sokka falls at his father’s feet, his young painted face caved in.

His mother’s hand pulls his face away from the stage, ghosting over the soft skin under his left eye. Zuko looks up at her. Her eyes are burning twin spots of gold, so bright he can’t bring his gaze to her face, but she moves her hand to the back of his head.

“Is this play familiar, my prince?” She asks, and he realizes they’re not in the theatre anymore. He blinks the tears from his eyes and croaks wordlessly. She wipes his face with the long sleeves of her red hanfu, still waiting for his answer. He shakes his head and the rest of his body follows, trembling with aimless fear, so Ursa takes him in her lap and holds him tight. She holds him and he feels so small, so raw. She holds him and he feels the sharp edges of his soul smooth over. 

“That’s alright, my love. You need more time.” She murmurs in his ear, carding through his hair and tucking her chin over his head. Zuko just sobs and curls his little hands around her neck. 

-

Princess Yue, as prone to spirits and prophetic visions as she is, has sufficiently managed their interference with her life since a very young age. When she was young, it was very difficult to protect herself without knowing anything about the spirit world. Through the years, she has developed a strong psychic ward that successfully drives away even the nastiest of ghouls, needing no more than a banishing word from her to finish the job. Violently chaotic prophetic dreams are really quite distressing for a young woman to be receiving on the regular, so Yue has blocked those out as well. The only dreams she has anymore are those from Tui herself - lax visions of icy shores and the ocean's depths. In all honesty, Yue has more or less forgotten about the psychic abilities of her youth out of a need to perform for her people. 

This is why their sudden and vivid resurgence has been, to put it lightly, a deeply unsettling omen of the future soon to come.

Of late, the princess of the Northern Water Tribe is a busy young woman. As her sixteenth birthday and womanhood looms over her head like a terrible moon, her time has been devoted to meeting her fiance’s family. Disgusted as she is at the prospect of marrying a boy like Hahn, she would rather not be having visions of the third kind while discussing their engagement.

Something has drastically changed in the past months. Yue is as certain of this as she is of the rising moon. 

-

After the winter solstice, the Avatar and his friends fly as fast as they dare over the wide open ocean to flee from Commander Zhao’s forces. In Katara’s arms is Aang, exhausted from his performance as the late Avatar Roku.

Over the campfire, Aang relays what his past life told him in the inner sanctuary of the island’s temple. Sokka and Katara stare into the fire, deep in thought, as Aang recalls one more thing.

“Roku asked me if I had seen his grandson, too. He said he’s lost.” The monk says, spooning broth into his mouth. Sokka snorts on his soup.

“But we don’t know anyone from the Fire Nation.” He laughs. Katara freezes like she’s been struck and looks up at him, gaze heavy. The lightness drains out of Sokka’s voice as he understands.

-

Zuko runs his hands over the smooth carved wood and ivory of his favorite  _ noh _ mask from mother’s collection, tracing the near perfect curves and angles of the spirit’s face. A ghastly smile, fanged, with dark eyes and stark white horns. Satin black ribbons dangle from the back like the tails of a whip. This is the mask of the  _ kishin _ , otherworldly and powerful, his favorite trope in the old theatre. Though he prefers contemporary plays, his mother instilled in him a love of  _ noh _ from a young age. The prince smooths his hands over the eyebrows once more before his mother takes the mask of the  _ deigan _ , eyelids lined with gold, and holds it to her face. 

The mask of the  _ deigan _ is that of a beautiful woman, but one of supernatural origin, as implied by the gold of its eyes. The way his mother’s bright eyes shine through the carved wood, shimmering and silent, is nearly enough to make him hesitate. He remembers his mother having brown eyes. But she always was a good actor, wasn’t she? 

Ursa takes the mask away from her face with a somewhat downcast look and sets it back in its bed of satin, and pushes the dark blue  _ kishin  _ mask into Zuko’s hands.

“You’ll need this later, my prince.”

-

In Taku, Sokka and Katara, wracked with sickness, are flown to a small temple on a steep mountain by their beloved bison and his monk. They are welcomed unceremoniously by a raggedy old woman who cackles and tells them to take a rest in the barracks among men of both fire and earth. Aang graciously accepts the offer for the siblings, who are too delirious of fever to make their own decisions. 

In the morning, when a fever-delirious Sokka finds himself in the company of red clothes and amber eyes, he nearly strangles a soldier. In reaction, Aang moves the siblings outside to stay with Appa. He himself spends the day inside the greenhouse, meditating and speaking in soft tones with the last herbalist of Taku. In a way that aches, she reminds him of the monks he grew up with. A bit grumpy, a bit silly, a bit like home. Last week, he was making a fruit pie with Gyatso. Today, he is the only airbender left alive.

“You remind me of a little boy who came here a long time ago.” She says simply, crushing seeds in a mortar. Aang, in a rare moment of patience, blinks up at her and waits.

“Not exactly a boy, I suppose. He was a spirit. Always laying in that jasmine bush you’re sitting next to.” She explains, and Aang straightens his shoulders. 

“A spirit?” The woman nods, popping open a glass bottle and dropping a few dried leaves into her mortar. Aang bends himself to his feet, eyes wide. 

“What did he look like?” He asks, voice a bit loud for the sleepy greenhouse, and the herbalist brings a gnarled finger to her lips. Aang bites his tongue.

“Young. One eye. Ponytail. Morgue clothes.” She grunts. Aang bounces on his heels and flaps his hands around himself excitedly. The bushes of the greenhouse tremble with the air, and the herbalist hollers at him to stop disturbing her plants as he bounces out of the institute to his companions.

-

While Aang is doing breathing exercises with Jeong Jeong, Sokka is sharpening his blade with some of the whetstones Bato gave him during their brief reunion. It’s not a very clean process, but it helps clear his head. Around him are the members of the small deserter camp, who are cooking, cleaning, and doing other small reparative tasks. It feels similar to home. He misses home. 

While he sits around the empty campfire, some of the ex-soldiers are sharpening their weapons as well, the sun beating down on them. He’s trying not to pry, but there’s been something bugging him. Around some of their necks are steel tag necklaces, with what looks to be the same faded character engraved on each of them: forty-one. 

“Are you deserters from the same division?” He asks. They look up at him and then to each other. One speaks up.

“Most of us aren’t, but we’re from the forty-first division.” The man gestures to those around him wearing the steel tags. Sokka tilts his head.

“Why’d you all leave?” He asks. The deserter looks to his companions wearing tags with the same expression of guilt and hesitation. Sokka feels like he’s accidentally walked into one of Dad’s council meetings.

One woman breaks the silence with a sigh and a shake of her head. She sets down her sword with the same energy of a drowning man.

“We were new recruits, going to be used as bait in a diversion. The crown prince spoke out in our defense.” Her hands are clenched together, elbows over her knees. She stares vacantly into the charred remains of the firepit. 

“He was thirteen. The Fire Lord killed him for  _ treason _ .” Sokka’s stomach drops into his feet. Her eyes are as empty as her voice is.

“It didn’t even matter. We went to battle anyway. Those of us that survived were sentenced to death. So we ran away.” She finishes. Sokka swallows, looking down at his whetstones. The deserters around him look down, staring into a memory he knows is miles away, so the boy picks up his blade and continues sharpening it. Water darkened by steel and grime pools around his hands. They are beginning to ache with the motion. He rolls a thought around in his head like a lichen-coated boulder - much too absurd, much too far fetched. But he opens his mouth anyway.

"What was his name? The prince." Sokka asks after a long, heavy silence. The deserters look at him with surprise. 

"Zuko."

-

“I hope I can help you while you’re here, my prince.” Ursa confesses, whispering almost inaudibly as she tosses a handful of breadcrumbs into the pond. Zuko blinks. The turtleducks paddle around in circles and peck at the offering happily, little black eyes as big and shy as he remembers them being. Zuko looks down at his hands. 

“Why am I here?” He mutters. Ursa stills. 

“Who are you?” He asks, louder, and Ursa lowers her head. 

“Who are you?” He cries angrily, throwing his seed into the pond. The ducks scramble away into the reeds. Ursa frowns.

“You’re not my mother.” Zuko clutches the sides of his head and tries to wish himself into a grave. This is not his mother. She has not been his mother, and he has known this, and she has tried to bury it. The surface of the pond reflects a dead boy’s face.

“You hate me. You hate me,” Zuko gasps, vomit coming up his throat. He rakes his nails over his eye and tears the flesh from his cheekbones. It sloughs off like waterlogged dead skin and stains the pond with ink and fire.

“You need to wake up, my prince.” She sighs. He is on his hands and knees, shuddering and convulsing, viscous black and red clumps falling from his face onto the soft grass. Ursa watches him fall apart with woeful golden eyes and changes the scene again.

-

Yue has been eating much less in the past few months. Her nails are growing brittle, hair thinning and falling out. Yugoda worries over her and her father looks on with concerned blank eyes. Neither of them care about her. They only care about  _ image _ . But it is very hard to convince yourself to eat when disaster and carnage are glued behind your eyelids, and every time you blink you can see your people’s destruction. 

Yugoda diagnoses her with a form of spirit sickness. Yue does not have the energy to laugh at this. While it certainly is an ailment of the spiritual kind, it is not her own spirit that is sick. Visions of the future taunt her nightly. She is barraged on all sides. 

On a moonless night, a month before her birthday, she is blessed with a strange reprieve. A figure with the presence of a Great Spirit comes to her in a dream. 

_ Please _ , she asks.  _ Let me into the sanctuary.  _

Yue stonily refuses. There is no telling what spirits will do to trick and deceive mortals. 

_ My son is sick. He needs your help. Please, _ the spirit begs, and Yue now can feel another, much smaller presence. It is human, young, and absolutely tormented. The swirling sorrow of a great tragedy strikes her like a bolt of lightning. The Great Spirit holds him, curls her great scaled body around him, but the red smoke pours from his face regardless. 

_ He will not listen to me. He believes I have forsaken him,  _ The Great Spirit says. Yue can feel the boy’s shuddering, shaking flame. 

_ Have you? _ Yue asks. The Great Spirit rumbles sadly, the sound of a roaring fire. There is no articulated response to this question, but the heaving sadness that seeps into her perception is enough of an answer.

_ Why should I help you? _ Yue asks the golden spirit, and she feels the serpent contort for a moment before settling.

_ You are kin of the third kind. Not related by blood, but by ichor.  _ The Great Spirit unhinges her jaw, and inside burns a sun that beats like a heart. Yue, with the moon woven deep into her soul, understands.

The princess opens the gate for the Great Spirit and her son and seals it quickly. The Great Spirit bows deeply, her wings open wide and flat against the grass of the sanctuary, and Yue returns the gesture. With the boy in her jaws, the Great Spirit crawls into the sacred waters where Tui and La circle each other. The golden beast dissolves into the pond. The boy is left behind, floating face up, shivering.

Yue awakens and hurries to the sanctuary. 

The moon-blessed princess drags the boy out of the water and onto the lush grass beside it. His skin is cold and pale, so unlike her own, and his soft breathing is the only thing that tells her he is more than just a body. He is not alive. She knows this to be true. While here in the oasis he looks as lively as herself, solid and lifelike, she can still feel the lingering energy in his chest like she can with all spirits. It is pocked with small burns the size and shape of thumbprints, and she shudders to know who caused them.

The princess sits down in the grass with the boy at her legs. She gazes up at the twinkling night sky and listens to the soft sleepy breaths of her cousin, one hand resting on the boy's black hair. It is smooth and fine, unlike her own coarse white hair. She tucks a strand behind his ear, pulls his head into her lap, and waits.

In a few hours, Zuko blinks up at an unfamiliar face and immediately recognizes himself to be awake, in a new place, no longer with the spirit pretending to be his mother. The new face looks down at him in surprise, blue eyes widened. White braids frame the sides of her face and fall loosely down around his neck. 

"Oh, you're awake. Hello." She says quietly, almost like if she spoke any louder she would break him. He sits up slowly with her help, warm hands lingering on his arm. Nobody has touched him in ages. It feels foreign.

"You're in the Northern Water Tribe. This is the spirit oasis." She explains, whispering again. He curls his fingers tentatively in the vibrant grass, breathes in the fresh clean air. In the muddy tunnels of memory, there was nothing as crisp as this, nothing to remind him of the real world. His eyes water with the slightest breeze. It's almost overwhelming, the intensity of the smallest senses.

"My name is Yue." She says. He turns to look at her. She doesn't flinch when she sees his face, not even a flash of pity in her eyes. It fills him with a warmth he hasn't felt in a long, long time.

"I'm Zuko."

Yue visits him every night and speaks with him in soft, low tones. He talks about the sun, the foggy memories he has of his life, and the burning ache that lives in his throat. She tells him of the great weight on her shoulders, and he understands the pressure like he understands nothing else. She combs through Zuko’s long black hair, weaves grass into it, and he revels in the feeling of someone caring for him. She tries to teach him to braid, how to pick the best flowers, how to bloom quietly in secret. Her hair shines as of late, healthier than it has been in months, and the visions of invasion and gore lessen each time she visits the spirit. He finds shelter in her quiet acceptance; she finds great comfort in the first friend of her life. 

In Zuko’s chest, the tightly wound knot of silk threads is loosening. It is coaxed into relaxation by gentle encouragement, quiet eyes, and steadfast understanding. It hurts, somewhat, to unravel. Like a wound that must be stitched or a thorn that must be pulled. 

The knot in his chest has nearly begun to surrender itself when Yue enters the oasis accompanied by three other children - children that Zuko knows all too well. The siblings he once haunted, and the boy his grandfather was thought to have killed. He stays silent on the other side of the pool, shocked into stillness, as the monk steps towards him hesitantly.

“You’re… not really here, are you?” The Avatar asks, sadness lacing his tone. Zuko shakes his head, still frozen, throat unmoving. Yue comes to his side. 

“This is Aang. I thought maybe you could help him, Zuko. We need to talk to the ocean and the moon. You’re a spirit. Do you think you could help?” Yue asks gently. Zuko moves his jaw, wordless, as the siblings glare at him from across the sacred pond.

“Why would he help us? He’s from the Fire Nation.” Sokka growls. Katara looks unsure of herself, shifting her weight and holding her waterskin with a loose grip. Months ago, perhaps Zuko wouldn’t have helped. Perhaps he would have mocked them. But the moon has welcomed him with open arms, braided olive branches into his heart, and he has no right to refuse her.

“I can try.” Zuko whispers.

Yue, Aang, and Zuko sit in a circle before the Great Spirits’ pond. Yue and Zuko join hands first, the ichor of the Great Spirits flowing between them, an ethereal glow around both of them. Aang takes one of each of their hands. Zuko feels nothing but a cold buzz through his fingertips, a branching pattern of silver through the three of them, connecting to the center of the earth with the young Avatar as its root. The monk’s tattoos glow with the energy. Sokka and Katara watch reverently, backs turned on the entrance to the sanctuary. 

The sounds of battle outside are coming closer. Steel on ice, screaming, explosions. Zuko dares not look beyond the walls that encase them. He channels himself into the prayer, the cry for help from the Great Spirits; not for the Avatar, but for Yue, for Tui’s chosen, who has held and cried with him, accepted his sharp edges without an ounce of regret.

His concentration is wrenched away at the sound of the sanctuary walls erupting, by voices crying out, by smoke and fire ripping through his prayer like the claws of a dragon. Yue stands and he rises with her. A low hiss fills the oasis and smoke billows forward. In the dim light of the moon, spiked shoulders and dark faces loom, and Sokka and Katara are lost in the thick cloud of smoke. Zuko puts himself in front of Yue and the Avatar, who is still in communion with the spirits.

The sky goes red.

Yue clutches her head and gasps, sharp and high. Zuko feels a shadow pass over his soul. The Avatar awakens with a shout of pain and scrambles to his feet, a violent gust of air clearing the entire oasis within seconds. Before the sacred waters stands a man with a burlap sack clenched in his hand, a horrible grin on his face, fists clenched in victory. Zuko’s ears are ringing, coldness in his chest almost freezing. He can’t hear a single thing. The Avatar looks panicked, Sokka and Katara with their weapons raised but expressions of terror on their face, as the man brings his flaming hand to the sack that holds the mortal form of the moon herself. 

In a sudden movement, he clenches his burning hand around the wriggling fish, flames engulfing the koi. The world goes gray. Zuko can feel something in his chest crack, like his sternum is breaking open. Yue falls to her knees. 

The long-dead prince lets out a noise somewhere between a scream and a howl. On the back of his head burns a stripe of fire like a whip, and his face contorts as he brings his hands to the sides of his cheeks, fingers curled around the dark blue mask of the  _ kishin _ . In his hands manifest his master’s dual dao, smog wreathing around the blades. Red smoke pours from underneath the mask of the Blue Spirit. 

The Blue Spirit whirls towards the murderer in flashes of steel and claws. The coward runs, leading them across the city, now bathed in shades of grey. All around him, waterbenders surrender, their Great Mother slaughtered in an act of foolishness that will ruin the earth. Zuko catches the man on a bridge above a canal, deflecting the blasts of fire thrown at him like water off the feathers of a duck. The man snarls at him and he returns the gesture with a hurricane of blows. 

“Who are you?” He utters, panting hard. Zuko pauses, teeth bared under the mask of the  _ kishin _ . Before he can grace the man with an answer, the moon is restored, color coming back to the world. The murderer whips around to face the sky, hands burning in claws. Below them, the water of the canal shimmers and glows with cyan light, rippling like the muscles of a huge beast.

“It can’t be!” He shouts, then turns back around to face Zuko, sweat glinting on his brow. A three-fingered hand emerges from the water, towering over him, and wraps itself around his torso. It drags him backwards. He lets out an aborted shout of panic and grips onto the railing of the bridge, knuckles white, eyes like a wild animal.

Zuko, with his father’s temper and his mother’s love, brings his heel down on the murderer’s fingers and watches the man drown. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be much more straightforward. On another note, we hit 1.5k hits! Thank you all for sticking with me on this exploration of magical realism! It has been truly wonderful to see people enjoy things I create.


	5. memoir of a bystander

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no easy way to come back into someone’s life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, I have worms in my brain. Iroh’s past is very much inspired by the Dragon of the Yuyan’s. It’s one of my absolute favorites, so please check it out if you’re up to reading a big Zuko-centric AU.

In all honesty, he knew where he was going to wake up. There was one person left for him, and he was exactly where Zuko had left him: Ba Sing Se.

It's early in the morning, much earlier than the sun rises, but still Zuko feels the grogginess of sleep pull at his eyelids and weigh his limbs down like a lead blanket. His head is resting resolutely on an uncomfortable flat surface, and it takes him a few minutes to shove himself up and off the  _ kotatsu _ . He blinks cobwebs from his eyelids and scrubs his face with the wide sleeves of green robes he's certain don't belong to him. It's a nicer building than he expected, white clay walls and delicately embroidered cushions instead of the rickety wooden tenement that he remembers from his visit two years ago.

Early starlight shines into the apartment by way of the open window. On the sill lies a faded ink portrait of Lu Ten; next to it, a small engraved dagger that Zuko recognizes all too well.

_ Never give up without a fight. _

Zuko hangs his head low. He has learned the art of crying in silence, perfected the pain of grieving, but does not know how to tame the writhing creature that now curls in his throat. Many words could name it. Perhaps tragedy; love burned in guilt, drowning in regret. There is no easy translation.

In the corner of the room, back to him, is a sleeping mound covered in green and yellow blankets. Zuko is glad that Uncle has moved out of his old slum. His back moves slowly; in and out, in and out. He thinks he could sit here forever, just existing in the dawn haziness of someone else’s life, never knowing or being known. It’s different than the other times he’s done this. Different for his intent, loosed like a hound desperate for the dark familiarity of its den. 

Zuko sits in the lotus position and waits. He is surprised by the sun waking him, the old man sitting before him with sad eyes and two cups of tea, steaming in the golden rays of the first sun Zuko has felt in three years.

“Good morning,” Uncle rumbles, voice like a warm fire, and the young prince feels tears prick at his eyes already. He blinks them away and swallows the lump in his throat. Silence has never failed him. 

“It has been a long time since I have met a spirit in the waking world.” Uncle says, holding his tea before his nose. Zuko looks down at the ceramic mug placed before him. The tea reflects his face back at him - the bandages look cleaner than usual, and his hair has grown longer. He looks too much like his father. 

“I have mourned for three years, and I will mourn for thirty more. You are not my nephew.” This is said with more flint in it than Zuko is expecting. He flinches. Iroh takes a sip of his tea, and Zuko brings his hands to his face, tracing underneath the bandages and pressing on the wound beneath. 

“Uncle, It’s me.” He stammers, jaw clenching just the slightest bit. 

“How do you expect me to believe you?” Iroh questions, gold eyes sharp and hard and it’s  _ so _ much worse than he was expecting.

“I’ve, I’ve been,” Zuko looks to his hands clenched in his lap, “lost, I think. I didn’t pass over. I never did.” He toys with the edge of his sleeve. Things go unsaid.  _ I miss you _ , for one.  _ I love you _ , implied.  _ I’m sorry _ .

“Show me something to prove it.” Iroh reaches out for Zuko’s pale hand that rests next to his tea. Zuko thinks for a moment, back to his childhood, fuzzy as it is. His gaze meets Uncle’s as one of his swords materializes in his right hand, the navy cording just as it was the day he stole it from Master Piandao. He brings it to the table, blade facing inwards, and lets his uncle look at the steel. 

“Are you truly my nephew?” Uncle whispers gravely, staring straight into his tea, a white-knuckle grip on the ceramic. The water inside the mug trembles slightly. Zuko whispers a small yes. _ I’m so, so sorry. _

“Oh, my boy. I’ve missed you so much.” Iroh smiles, shuddering like a dying flame, as tears drip down his face. Zuko swallows his words when Uncle shuffles around the table to embrace him, pulling him close and tightening his fingers in his robes. His head finds its place in the crook of his uncle’s shoulder, arms weighted dumbly at his sides. Sunlight streams through the open window and onto his face, he can feel the tears in his eyes, and something snaps into place. Zuko brings his arms up around his uncle and burrows his face down into the green robes.

-

The Swamp is dense, humid, and overwhelmingly alive. Fog blankets over the still water like a huge ghost. Aang feels it behind his eyes, an enormous buzzing presence. It was so subtle he didn't notice it at first, but now, separated and afraid, it is the only thing he can hear. 

He shouldn’t be afraid, he reminds himself. He’s the Avatar, great bridge between spirit and mortal world, but after his disastrous encounters with rogue spirits thus far, it’s hard not to feel smothered by this swamp. 

Aang bends the water out of his clothes and hops up onto the largest root he can see, the smooth bark beneath his palms all slippery and alive. The whole wetland is whispering to him. Below the canopy, there is no sunlight to dapple the bark of trees. The murky water and the mist mingles together in the distance, the braided roots twisting far beyond the horizon. 

A childish laugh pierces the air. A flutter of feathers, the clop of hooves, the rustling of silk. He sees a girl in a pale dress run from him, a winged boar alongside her. The glow of spirit magic hangs in the air. He sprints after her, ducking around roots and hanging branches, water flying around him. The Avatar takes a pause in a clearing, breathing hard. He can’t hear the laughter anymore.

As he turns to trek back, before him stands is a boy younger than himself, transparent and wispy. Dark hair falls over his back, which is turned. The skin of his shoulders is covered in faint red scars the size and shape of fingerprints, his ribs a splotch of purple bruises. Aang steps around the figure. He’s wrapping his wrist in bandages - it’s a handprint-shaped burn, too large to be from the boy himself. His skin is raw, glistening in the low light of the swamp, and the boy sighs in a very resigned way as he tucks the end of the wrap around his thumb.

The sound of splashing water disrupts them both. Aang whips to see Katara stumbling through the water, wiping at her eyes, and Sokka with an arm around her shoulder, hacking through the hanging vines. The apparition looks up at the noise, then to the Avatar. 

“Who are you?” Aang whispers. Golden eyes stare back. The boy drops like a stone, melting into the dark water like he was never there in the first place.

-

The day Iroh walked out of the palace, straight onto a ferry, was also the day his nephew died. It was noon, sun blazing, when Zuko’s eyes rolled back in his head. Iroh almost wanted to stay. See that film grow over his eyes, watch him be wrapped in a shroud and carried to a pyre. If he couldn’t honor Lu Ten’s death rites, he could honor his nephew’s. But it wasn’t right - this was no honorable death, no valiant sacrifice. There was no hero or silver lining. This was blood for blood’s sake. 

So Iroh left. Walked straight out, under Agni’s  _ blessed _ sunlight, and got on a ferry. He didn’t sleep or eat for three days. When he arrived in Shu Jing at Piandao’s door, he was received without question. 

It is not easy, to know you had every chance to stop a murderer, and took none of them.

Iroh remembers a time before the Siege of Ba Sing Se. Days where Lu Ten and Zuko would play for hours in the courtyards, mud-covered and innocent, blossoming together. Lu Ten adored his little cousin. He took tea with Ursa as they played, watching the boys from the balcony of her favorite courtyard.

“Dad?” Lu Ten came to him once, scuffling his shoes on the ground. Iroh listened with a crooked eyebrow. His son was coming into the prime of his youth, a constant bundle of energy. It was not like him to show reservation in any manner.

“Is Uncle Ozai… a good father?” Iroh turned to his son, blinking wide. Lu Ten looked down at the floor with pursed lips. 

“It’s just, whenever Uncle Ozai calls for Zuko, he seems really scared. And… Zuko has a lot of bruises.” Iroh clenched his teeth and gripped his tea tighter, taking a deep breath. 

“It’s nothing but coincidence, my son. Ozai is a good man.” Lu Ten did not seem reassured by this, looking away with a scorned gaze. Iroh put a hand on his shoulder.

“Lu Ten, you must know that implying something like that is treasonous.” He whispered, steely and urgent. His son nodded harshly, shaking off his hand, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“I know, Dad. I know.”

Iroh remembers seeing the burn scars pock-marking Zuko’s little arms and turning a blind eye. He remembers Zuko’s thin wrist, wearing a bracelet of his father’s love, and stamping down the queasy feeling in his stomach. It would be foolish to break the peace among the royal family. 

When the boys played, Iroh shared tea with his brother’s wife, and they enjoyed each other’s company as much as they could in the limited time their duties offered them. It was for her that he started making his own blends of tea, trying to soothe her depression, and, when she had been pregnant, her morning sickness. She loved her children as much as the moon loved the sea. 

“Zuko is a gentle boy.” Ursa said, nursing a cup of tea in one hand. Iroh blinked at her. She often had a cloud over her eyes, as if she was not entirely present. It was missing at the time of this conversation. She stared out over the courtyard at her son, petting the turtleducks with Lu Ten.

“He is a gentle boy, and I am afraid of what that will make of him.” She whispers. Iroh wet his lips to speak, but found all wisdom ripped from him, throat dry. Across the courtyard, Lu Ten laughed. The turtleducks chirped in a chorus of praise. The uneasiness in his stomach grew heavier with each visit. He pushed it down, urging himself to remain silent. In his heart, he knew Ursa would take care of Zuko.

Then Ursa left. Lu Ten died. Ozai took the dragon throne, and in his grief, Iroh pushed his nephew to the far corners of his mind. Months,  _ years _ spent scouring the spirit world for his son. 

He came back to a different nephew than the one he’d left with Ursa. Zuko had grown thorns. He wore high collars, he kept his eyes on the floor, he didn’t speak unless spoken to. It took months of patient waiting for Iroh to see the gentle boy he knew was hiding inside the mask. And when he’d finally found him, his father burned him to death.

For thirteen years, Iroh thought of nothing but himself, and it cost the life of a child. The only reason Zuko was dead was because he was too much of a coward to do anything - anything at all - to prevent it.

Piandao took care of Iroh as best as he could. He reminded him to eat, invited him to play pai sho, to drink tea. He had one-sided conversations with the man that used to be The Dragon of the West. Eventually, after months of silence and stillness, Iroh came back. As quickly as he did, he asked for a sum of money and a few provisions. Nothing much; a satchel, a knife, a change of clothes. A fresh start, he said, awaits him in the city of Ba Sing Se.

The Jasmine Dragon is the product of three years of long, gruelling work, moved twice across its lifetime all the way to the Upper Ring. It is his pride and joy. He wakes before the break of dawn to grind tea leaves, and when the shop is closed on one day of the week, he scours the market for the only best merchants. He welcomes artisans and noblemen into his home and hearth. He leaves milk out for the stray cats. He sends Piandao letters, messages wrapped in the language of pai sho, and thanks him for his help. Each morning he lights incense before Agni’s cold light and prays that his sons have passed into the spirit world. The third year comes, and he thinks of Zuko every day. 

Word on the streets is that the Avatar is back. Iroh thinks it’s a bit far-fetched. News of the outside world doesn’t get far, all the way in the gilded Upper Ring, but there seems to be a lighter feeling in the Lower market he goes to for tea leaves. Children laugh a bit louder. People are grinning. The air feels just a bit clearer. There’s hope to be found, it seems, even in folk tales. 

Months later, the moon goes grey, then red, then silver again. The morning after that, a spirit wearing the face of his dead nephew sleeps at his bedside. Iroh thinks there might be some truth to the rumor of the Avatar’s awakening.

-

The scents of the Jasmine Dragon are a bouquet of herbs and flowers collected on a summer day, tied together with a piece of rough-hewn twine, and hung from a sunlit window to dry with Agni’s blessing. They are the sensation of wheat and grass tickling his fingers as he strides through a golden field. They are locked inside of his heart in a cedar cabinet, and the key rests on a worn woven necklace that has been tied around his uncle’s neck for three years. The scents of the Jasmine Dragon are a memory that Zuko did not know he had locked away.

Iroh opens the cabinet, and the floodgates open with them. 

“Please, stay here with me.” He says, still holding the crumpled body of a ghost. Zuko nods weakly, trying and failing to swallow the lump in his throat. He forces a laugh out, and it sounds more like a cough.

“I have nowhere else to go, Uncle.” He croaks, pulling away and plastering a smile on his face. Iroh holds his hands, thin and ghostly, in his own.

“Agni cursed me. I can’t go to the spirit world.” Iroh’s face falls into darkness, looking away with pursed lips. He gives Zuko’s hands a squeeze; half comfort, half fury. The ghost nearly flinches away.

“If Agni will not allow you to pass, stay with me. Perhaps I can help you. I have been to the spirit world myself.” Iroh says. Zuko is quiet for a long moment.

“You would do that?” He murmurs, uncomprehending. Iroh nods once, with all the dedication in his body, eyes a blazing hearth. 

“I have made so many mistakes in my life, Zuko. It would be the first step to righting my chain of wrongdoings. I would be honored to help you pass over.” Iroh rumbles, voice low in his chest like the purr of a lion. Soft tears drip onto their joined hands. The man pulls him into a hug, cradling the back of his head, bony fingers digging into his robes.

“Thank you, Uncle. Thank you.” 


	6. the feelings start to rot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things fall apart.

It’s early in the morning, just after the sun has risen, when Iroh drags Zuko to the market in the Lower Ring. The sky is mercifully overcast. As they walk along the rough-cobbled streets, white light peeks through the thick cover of clouds where the barrier is thinnest. It makes Zuko nervous, though he is not sure why. 

Iroh burns heavy incense and spends long hours praying over slips of paper full of consecrated ink, has him hold onto them and sleep with them. He’s been with Uncle for a few months now, helping him in the shop when he can, meditating late into the night with him. It’s longer than he was with Hakoda, longer than he was with Yue. 

It feels different, lately. There’s something he’s forgetting. His memory feels like a smudged oil painting, streaks going opposite directions, like the very subject of the painting has been erased entirely. 

There’s something he’s forgetting, isn’t there?

Few vendors are open at this hour. The tenements are lined with violet shadows, the ghosts of night still clutching to cracks in the walls where small vines flourish. Zuko follows his uncle with his head down. Iroh walks narrow, claustrophobic alleys, the scent of blooming flowers hanging in the air like a noose.

He wraps his arms around himself as Uncle stops to talk to a street cook under a sun-bleached awning. It’s not cold, but he’s still shivering. Uncle talks with the man and exchanges a few coins, copper and silver, for a bouquet of moon flowers. The weather is right for them today, Iroh says. Zuko thinks about a clearing full of them, bloomed and glimmering, deep in the Earth kingdom. 

They walk further. The ghost thinks about the sun. The way it peeks over the great earthen walls of the city, like the wings of some violent beast, baring its fangs. He shudders at the thought of it, though his heart cries out for its warm touch. Unreciprocated, it seems to be. The sky is still grey. Iroh speaks in gentle tones with a ragged woman, gives her his spare coin and a word of advice. He watches, fingernails pressed against his skin like a prayer.

"You have a beautiful son, sir." She says, cradling a baby against her breast. Zuko flinches instantly. Iroh smiles, a fog over his eyes, and Zuko feels a shivering lump writhe against his heart like a great mass of leeches. Is that who I am to him, he asks himself. A replacement for something long lost?

Days later, Zuko stands in the back of the Jasmine Dragon, stirring a pot of water. He doesn’t know what the water is for, or why it’s boiling, or where the other employees are. The shop might as well be closed. He wouldn’t know. The steam billows into his face like some angry creature with wings. He closes his eyes, revelling in the feeling of not being able to breathe. Sweat trickles down the side of his face.

He finds his hand tugging at his bandages, moist from the steam. It’s almost unbearably hot underneath the heavy gauze. Uncle’s  _ ofuda _ , the spirit tags, are burning a hole in his pocket. Zuko ignores them. A strip of fabric unravels itself and he feels the whole binding loosen, suddenly aware of the pressure around his head, below his ear and behind his neck. The hot air of the shop holds itself like a parasite in his chest.

Zuko tears himself away from the stove and grips his face with claws unsheathed, scrabbling around the bandages like an animal chewing its own leg off. They fall off easily, almost like a layer of skin, and fall to the floor, wet and grimy in the spot where his left eye once sat. There are no porcelain plates in the back room - he looks around wildly for a mirror before settling his eyes on the still-roiling water. 

Creaks in the wood above him, feet coming down the stairs. The pot of steaming water looms in front of him like a funeral pyre. Uncle calls out for him innocently. The wicked smolder of the  _ ofuda _ in his pocket is sucking the blood out of him. His feet carry him to the stove, the burner blazing just next to his stomach, and leans over the water to peer back at himself.

Iroh walks into the kitchen to find a pot violently boiling over, the scalding water frothing all over the counter. Hot white steam hangs heavy in the small room. Zuko is nowhere in sight.

It’s been a week since he saw the face of someone he didn’t know in his reflection, and he’s been as present as he can be, still cursed by the sun. It is overcast often - Ba Sing Se is having a particularly cloudy spring. They sit around the low table, the  _ kotatsu _ . Uncle’s made curry for dinner; he spoons chunks of steaming rice into a bowl and ladles sauce and meat over it. He gives Zuko a bowl, as he always does, though they both know he can’t eat it. Despite the good intentions Iroh has, it curdles Zuko’s stomach to think that food is being wasted in his name. 

Zuko knows what he’s been forgetting. He’s known it since he looked at his reflection. The curve of his jaw, the angle of his nose, the shape of his eyelids. He’s not the only one who shares them.

“Why did you leave her?” He rasps. Uncle’s hand pauses as it brings a spoon to his mouth, and he blinks, putting it down.

“I… who?” His response is only fuel to the fire.

“Azula.” Zuko spits. Iroh visibly pales, then looks away with narrowed eyes. There’s a long pause where the food in front of them just sits, witnesses to the crumbling.

“She was too dedicated to your father.” He answers, folding his hands in front of him. Zuko feels a hand tighten around his heart.

“What is that supposed to mean?” His lip curls. 

“She has been corrupted by him, Zuko. You know how she is.” He says, calmly, like it makes any difference at all.

“She was a child when you left!” He grits out.

“I had no choice. I couldn’t stand to see you - your death was the final straw. I couldn’t bear to watch your suffering any longer.” Iroh runs a hand through his beard, eyes shut tight, voice wobbling. 

“So you ran away.” He drips with contempt, vicious and black. Iroh tightens his hands into fists.

“Zuko, please.” He begs. 

“You didn’t change anything by leaving! You just abandoned her!” Zuko yells, hands in claws, slamming the tabletop. 

“I had no choice!” Iroh’s voice cracks in half like a broken plate. Tears fall in fat drops onto the  _ kotatsu _ .

“You should’ve  _ helped  _ her!” Zuko cries, ferocity infringing upon grief, an uncomfortable knot in his throat. Iroh stares past him, eyes clouded over. Ragged breaths fill the small apartment. Zuko pushes the bowl of curry away from him, imagining a hoard of leeches writhing in the rice, and stands up. 

“I’m leaving. I’m going to find Azula.” He says, as quiet as the ghost he is, and disappears. Iroh puts his head in his hands and sobs.

-

Despite his efforts, it seems Agni wants him in Ba Sing Se. The palace is too far, distant, the memory of its gilded halls a faint presence compared to Azula’s familiar aura. She burns sapphire and gold, energy humming just beneath the outskirts of the city. It’s dark down here. Though he’s lived for so long without the sun, something in his chest feels quieter, muted, when he appears under the layers of earth. 

Dark hallways stretch behind and in front of him, lined with eerie green lanterns. The rigid walls of sandstone bricks have been carved straight from the earth itself. The darkness stretches out above him, and it makes his stomach churn. It’s nowhere he’d expect to find his sister. It’s nowhere he’d want her to be. 

He picks a direction and starts walking, grains of sand trailing after his footsteps like flies. When he can’t hear the familiar swishing of his robes, he realizes he’s in his theatre costume. The weight of the mask on his face is comforting. If he concentrates, he can almost imagine his mother’s hands on his shoulders, the feeling of her silken hanfu under his fingertips.

The hallways are endless. Zuko thinks his senses might be playing a trick on him, but it seems like the place was designed to be unnavigable. Everything looks the same, every corridor lined with the same haunting green lights, every locked door made of cold steel. The longer he stays, the fainter he feels. The distance from Agni is smothering. 

A faint rumble comes through his thin shoes, the sand on the ground bouncing up and down. He strains his ears. It comes again; the deep lowing of an animal. It sounds like rolling dark clouds. Zuko follows the vibrations with his eyes closed, hands out to feel the slight tremors of the endless rock walls. Eventually, he comes to a wider, taller section of the maze. The ceilings are domed, somehow. Stray pieces of hay litter the ground. 

The rumbling is much louder, now. He doesn’t need to rely on his hands to guide him. In front of him are two huge steel doors, a padlock clamped around its handles. Making claws with his hands, the dual dao of his master solidify in his grip, and he slices straight through the rough metal with a single stroke.

The doors swing inwards, nearly silent. Heavy chains rattle inside, the moaning of the great beast echoing through the hallways. Zuko brings a gloved finger to the lips of the mask. It’s the Avatar’s bison. Each of its feet are chained with huge cuffs. Its cream fur is matted, stained with blood and waste. It backs away from him, eyes like pools, and Zuko frowns.

He puts his dao down. That seems to calm the beast somewhat, though its eyes still flit around the room, restless and trembling. He approaches, arms outstretched. It shakes like a mouse. He reaches up and lets it come towards his hands, big gray sniffing hesitantly at his black clothes. It butts his torso gently, the force nearly taking him off his feet, and it blinks slowly at him. He smiles, a small, weak thing, and turns to pick up his dao. The beast flinches when he rises to cut its chains. Zuko doesn’t blame it. 

-

This place is grating on his nerves. He doesn’t know how long it’s been, but it certainly feels like long enough. He wants to find Azula, has to find Azula, needs to find Azula. He  _ knows _ she’s here, but it’s ridiculous the hours he’s spent just walking the same damned hallways over and over, never a single sign of life. He’s mapped it out in his head - it’s massive, but it does have different wings. Some rooms are lavishly decorated with walls of books and He thinks it’s a prison of some kind, or perhaps a bunker for the royal staff in the event of an invasion. 

There’s one section he finds, deep inside the earth, that takes his breath away. It’s the sound of running water that draws him to the cavern. Huge shards of rock, sparkling and brilliant, erupt from the bones of some ancient spirit. Ambient green light refracts through each pillar of crystal. Rushing water flows through natural canals in the ground, frothing and white. 

A distant voice distracts him from the brilliance of the chamber. He shoots up to listen. If he’s lucky, it might be Azula. He clambers over jagged crystals and raw ore towards the voice, through a sickeningly narrow channel in the rock and out into a smaller subchamber, where his heart drops into his stomach. It’s not Azula - not at all. 

Katara braces herself against the crystals, seething and shouting, like an animal in a trap. Her hands are bleeding. She pauses, breathing hard, and Zuko takes the opportunity to kick a stray rock. She whips her head around to see him, and her face freezes before morphing into bitter confusion.

“Why are  _ you _ here?” She asks, turning fully, hands on her waterskin. Zuko looks around the chamber, finding it without any doors or tunnels.

“Why are you?” He returns. She scoffs, streaming a glowing handful of water out to heal her palms. 

“The Dai Li put me down here. They turned against the Earth King. I have to get out of here and stop them.” She spits, scorn thick on her tongue. Zuko knows of the Dai Li, wary of their slinking throughout the Upper Ring, but never thought of them to be anything more than the guards of the crown.

He thinks about the months he stayed with Katara and her brother. She was always kind to him. Zuko jerks his head towards the narrow tunnel he’d crawled through to reach her. 

“I know a way out.” He says. She brightens immediately, running quickly towards him, and he takes off his mask to crawl through the claustrophobic channel. She makes a sound of dread on the other side of the wall before he helps to pull her out with more than a few tears in her dress.

“Thank you, Zuko.” She breathes, almost shy. Zuko nods. There’s a pause where all he can hear is the rushing water, but she takes another breath before speaking.

“I… don’t mean to be rude, but why did you help me?” She asks. Zuko looks to the side. Why  _ did _ he help her?

“I don’t know,” he admits, “it looked like you needed help?” It’s more of a question than an answer. 

“You’re the prince of the Fire Nation.” She sweeps her hands over the earth like it’s some big announcement. What has being a prince ever gotten him?

“I  _ was _ the prince.” He corrects her tersely, clicking his teeth together in his dry mouth. Her shoulders slump, and she crosses her arms, almost embarrassed. 

“Sorry. I… I forgot. You seem a lot more alive lately.” She murmurs. He blinks, looking at his hands. A tense quietness stretches out between them, but Zuko can tell she’s not done talking, her jaw clenching as she furrows her brow.

“How did you die, Zuko?” 

He remembers his eyes rolling back in his head, remembers the herbal scent of the linens that the death doulas cleaned him with, remembers the feeling of a silk sash being fastened around his head to close his jaw. They had him hold a bouquet of jasmine flowers at his viewing. Uncle Iroh was the only one that saw him after his death. His father and Azula were absent, torn by grief, he likes to think. 

He’s been trying to remember how it happened. What sent him to the infirmary? What burned him so badly as to take his eye and his life? It was sickness, the royal scribe said. So it was sickness, he told himself, and kept his face under lock and key.

“Sickness,” he says. Katara hesitates. He puts his mask back on, and she falls silent. 

The wall adjacent to them explodes in a shower of rock and crystal. Without warning, the room is filled with frantic shouts, and the ground opens up, Dai Li emerging from the earth like a horde of maggots. There’s agents all around them. Katara lifts the running water around her into a ring, spines of rock shoot up around his feet, and he doesn’t even realize he’s wielding his dao until instinct slices through the rocks being hurtled at his head.

The Avatar is here. Iroh, of all people, is here. He doesn’t recognize the small girl obliterating agents in packs, crushing them like bugs between earthen claws. Iroh’s bending illuminates the din in brief, violent flashes of light. Katara whirls around in a storm of ice and fury, freezing the Dai Li in their tracks.

Through the echoing yells and rising clouds of dust, the smell of blood and burning hair, he hears a voice, the voice that echoes in his dreams. His spine straightens instantly. Azula is here, somewhere, in the chaos. She’s wrong, though. Something feels wrong about her, something twisted, something aching. 

They’re surrounded. The Avatar has bent himself into a crystal prison, his waterbending master bloodied and beaten, still defending him. Iroh grapples with the agents. Zuko can tell he’s losing. The little earthbender fights on, as unyielding as her element, but he knows a losing battle when he sees one.

Something horrible happens. 

Zuko has known Azula had long harnessed the skill of lightning - she was practicing beautifully executed katas by the time he left three years ago. It’s no wonder she’s mastered the technique. He knows he’s not a prince anymore. He lost that title when he spent months wandering the earth and learning to live with the people of other nations. He knows he’s too soft, too gentle, too weak to bend lightning. When he was alive, Zuko envied Azula for her natural talent. Now, he thinks he may not be the only one cursed by Agni. 

The sound of the Avatar’s body dropping to the cold stone floor will echo in his ears for days. The smell of blackened flesh is familiar to him, but never pleasant. Knowing that it’s not his own is even worse. Katara cries out, the look in her eyes like a boat crashing against a rocky shore. Iroh is trapped between daggers of saw-toothed crystal, the Dai Li closing in around him. Katara cradles the monk in her arms and a whirl of water carries her upwards, towards a grate in the ceiling, where the beast he freed hovers. 

Iroh sees the Blue Spirit standing, unmoving, and cries out.

“Go! Follow your destiny, Prince Zuko!” 

There is a split second of silence. It feels like an eternity. Azula turns to him and screeches wordlessly, pointing herself towards her uncle with sparks of lightning on her pointed claws. It strikes the earth at his feet. She’s still screaming. He doesn’t understand a word she’s saying, teeth bared and nearly frothing. Her eyes are glassy but blazing, like a rabid animal, all fury with no direction. 

“My brother is dead, you coward! Shut up! You’re a traitor  _ and  _ a liar!” She’s smiling, but it’s in that same horrible way. He can feel her heart, knotted and black, racing in her ribs. Zuko traces his fingers around the edge of his theatre mask and thinks about the little girl he used to hold hands with in the palace courtyard. 

And suddenly, she’s looking at him. Not through him, like the Dai Li, but directly at him, with an expression that he can’t read or place. 

Zuko takes off his mask.

Azula is silent.

He erupts into smoke and carries himself away.

**Author's Note:**

> i plan on weekly updates. i am wormmunist on tumblr, where i might post art if yall want it. please leave a comment if you enjoyed! i live for them. 
> 
> ˓˓ก₍⸍⸌̣ʷ̣̫⸍̣⸌₎ค˒˒


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